The Rats of NIMH
by Raha
Summary: One: All will bow to the Irken Reformation Company. Two: All will conform to the Irken image. Three: All non-Irken activities will cease immediately. Four: All individual thought will be banned. Five: All defects will be terminated. ALL! HAIL! IRK! ZADR.
1. Captured

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH  
**

**Chapter One: Captured**

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**WARNING: Contains graphic violence, adult themes, possible character death, and boy-on-boy action. Will be rated a high T for now, but will change to M in later chapters. If you are of the faint of heart, I'd turn back now. Here there be monsters. **

The room was white, austere, and bare. There were no windows, or furniture, and only one door that slid open and closed with a metallic hiss. Monitors covered the far wall, talking quietly to themselves in their whirring way, and they filled the room with static. Standing in the middle of the floor was an operating table.

"GET OFF ME!"

Dib Membrane was dragged into this room kicking and roaring his lungs out. The six Irkens holding him were tossed like little dolls, but they hung on grimly with their sharp mechanical legs. They were pulling him towards the table, and upon seeing it, Dib's heart gave an awful little jump. There were horrors that had happened here. He could feel them as strongly as if he were seeing blood drip from the walls, and it filled him with a dread that froze him solid. He dug his heels in, but those detestable little insects were tenacious, and they hauled him inevitably forward and threw him bodily down.

He lashed out, snarling like a beast, and that's when the table came alive beneath him. Steel hands shot out and gripped his wrists with punishing force and wrenched him down hard, so that he was on his back with his arms splayed out on either side. More steel clamped down on his hips, and his ankles, while he spat every obscenity he could think of. And then he screamed as the surgical knives ripped open his back.

Something, hard and invasive and excruciating, drilled down and pinched at the nerves in his spine just at the base of his neck. Dib threw back his head as a volt of sheer energy grabbed a hold and shook him to the core, his mouth open in a silent scream because the pressure and the pain of it pushing at his throat were so powerful it overthrew him, that even his voice was lost under such force. His every muscle seized, and every nerve burned, and the world blazed an intense, intolerable white. His vision, distorted and blurred because they'd broken his glasses, flicked on and off as the neurons in his brain began to fire back and forth so hard he nearly forgot where he was. If he wasn't held down, he would have thrashed himself to pieces.

It seemed like eternity before they let him go, and he fell against the table, panting and gasping and shaking. Dib had bitten through his own tongue. Blood welled up quickly, and he choked on the copper taste of it. There was a flurry of motion out of the corner of his eye, and something was shoved into his mouth, and he gagged. It made a wet, hollow sucking noise that reminded him of the dentist, but it got rid of the blood before it excreted something foul-tasting and numbing. The drip in his wrist kept him alive, and awake, and aware of everything.

The drill came again, punching twice into his back on both sides of his ribcage, and for a horrifying moment he felt something close around his heart. A second later, and he realized it was a _hand_.

"Such fascinating creatures you are," murmured a voice, composed and decorous, through the haze and jump that was Dib's mind. "Completely autonomous, from the day you are born. You haven't the need for a Pak, or any such external devices. All you require is fuel and rest…Extraordinary. So unlike us."

"…Wh-who…?" Dib asked, his voice ragged, and he tried to summon up the energy to turn his head, wanting to see. But the Irken still had his hand in Dib's chest, and when those fingers gave a gentle squeeze—_not supposed to—dear God—__**wrong**__—_the room tipped and Dib reeled within himself, struggling to breathe. He passed out once, twice, but they always jerked him out of the burgeoning black that writhed like something alive just at periphery's edge.

Dib groaned as the Irken, with an awful squelching noise, removed his arm. It was replaced by metal and wires screwing themselves into his flesh and twining around his insides. He could feel them, things that were plugging into his lungs and his heart, and then those things wriggled up and scraped against the bones in his neck before they pushed into the base of his skull…

Dib howled and kicked out, fighting his restraints as hard as he could. "_What are you doing to me?_" His voice was pitched and frantic, and it cracked from having screamed so much. A body stepped into his line of sight and he looked up with wide, panicked eyes.

This wasn't Zim. There was none of his enemy's gusto or spark, no bark of laughter, or giddy triumph. There was a kind of meticulous order about this particular Irken, from the scrupulous starch and press of his lab coat, to the patrician perk of his antennae. He was tall for his kind, though still a few inches shy of Dib, but he held himself with all the self-important propriety of an Emperor...or Almighty Tallest. His eyes were a deep shade of ruby red, and they stared down at Dib with smug detachment.

This Irken's name was Mar, and he was in charge of the newly instated Irken Reformation Company of the National Institute of Mandate Habilitation. It was known as Company of NIMH. Their job? To conform all races into one race: the Irken Empire.

The surgical knives retreated, and Mar stepped aside to reveal the mirror that stood by the wall. Despite his nebulous eyesight, Dib could make out the thing they'd attached to his back, and suddenly he felt as if his stomach had been pumped full of lead. A Pak. They'd outfitted him with a Pak.

"What am I doing, child?" Mar repeated, his tone soft-spoken and evenly clipped. "Why...I'm making you _better_."

**_To be continued…_**

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**Disclaimer: All rights reserved by Jhonen Vasques and Nickolodeon. I just write fanfiction. **

**Well, guess who's back? You thought I died, didn't you? Didn't you? Well, I didn't. And look! A new story. My apologies for going away for so long, but a lot of stuff happened, which I'll probably get into later. Mostly just moving around, school, new jobs, and life in general getting in the way.**

**But anyway, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first installment of The Rats of NIMH. Formerly, Bootleg Bebop, but I kinda like this better-So I ripped it. Please take this time to leave any comments; your reviews are most appreciated. I know it starts out a little dark, and right in the middle of things, but that's how I do stuff. I promise, all will be explained in the next chappie or so. The title and NIMH are of course taken from the book of the same name. The original stands for the National Institute of Mental Health, but the name, NIMH, just sounds so...ominous. I had to use it somewhere. And! And! Did you notice that the first letters of the Irken Reformation company spell IRC? Irk. Yeah, I put a lot of thought into that. That's me being smart.**

**Also, as you know, this is a ZADR story, but I probably won't get to that for a while, and I promise just mild snogging. You know the drill—don't like, don't read. I know Dib's last name isn't technically Membrane, but I don't care. One other thing, my keyboard is seriously screwy, so if you notice any spelling errors, please let me know. I'm a huge spelling nerd.**

**Over and out,**

**Raha**


	2. Revelations of Ten Years Prior

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH  
**

**Chapter Two: Revelations of Ten Years Prior**

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Zim hated them. He _hated_ them. _Humans. _Repulsive, festering worms, they infected the world with plague as if they were nothing more than lowly vermin. They were stupid creatures, beyond even ignorance for they refused to see what was in front of their own noses, to see the "bigger picture". Only concerned with their own petty, insignificant lives, they crawled around on their bellies like roaches. Disgusting, and diseased, and absolutely infuriating.

And _why_, for Irk's sake, did they have to _grow_ so freaking much? Especially that wretch, Dib. Damn him and his long legs. Damn him for growing up so fast. It had been a year, one stupid piddling little year, and he had gained four inches. Four! Imagine, being shorter than your arch-nemesis. The idea was appalling. Now, Dib practically towered over the alien, much to Zim's mortification, and he wasn't giving any indication of stopping. Not that the Irken hadn't tried to make him, which basically consisted of him throwing the boy down and threatening to boil his insides if he didn't stop getting tall. Dib had told him to go jump in a lake.

It was in desperation that he began to experiment with his Pak, a thing no Irken was permitted to do. It was the most obscene of taboos, to alter one's own Pak. It was akin to a human trying to perform brain surgery on themselves. Until then, Zim had only done routine check-ups and maintenance, something they were trained in when becoming Invaders, but what he had in mind now was entirely different.

"GIR! Be quiet, I have to concentrate!" he barked, and gave his little robot a withering glare. Gir wilted for a moment, and dropped the cast iron pot he'd been repeatedly banging over his head. Something had shaken loose, and was rattling around somewhere in there.

"Awwww…" he whined, and slunk away. Then there was a squeal from around the corner, and Gir let out a peal of insane laughter that faded off into the bowels of their base as he ran to chase after stray shadows. Zim muttered irritably to himself before turning back to his work. He had ten minutes. Less, even, because his body would stop responding after about six. So he could function for about six minutes without his Pak, so whatever he wanted to do, he would have to do it quickly and then plug back in and wait to recharge. The trouble was he wasn't quite sure what it was he wanted to do.

He started by poking around, inspecting every cog and wire and gear. He had a general idea of what he was looking at, like most humans had a general idea of their guts, but he was lost when it came to the details. It was several hours, countless recharges, and a few minor freak-outs later that he found it, and when he did he wasn't sure what it was.

It was a curious little contraption, hidden away behind a mess of electrical things, and attached to one of the main cables that fed directly into his body. That meant it was important, but it was unmarked…and it was locked. Zim tapped it experimentally with a claw, brows knitted in growing irritation. Nothing was ever _locked_ in an Irken Pak. What if a medic needed to get in there? Surely, there was a way to access it. In fact, it looked like it required some sort of code. But he'd never heard of something like this. What was the point, anyway, since most Irkens didn't go prying into their own Paks in the first place?

"Computer, run a diagnostic on this," he ordered, sitting back in his seat.

"Looks like a generator, or something," the computer replied after a pause.

"Of _what_?"

"I don't know."

Zim scowled, and glared at the nearest terminal in exasperation. "Well, find out!" he snapped.

"I can't," the computer retorted. "It's jamming my readouts."

Zim stared down at the device in his Pak, his intrigue peaking. What was so special about this thing that it was hidden away and encrypted and locked up so tight? He began to tinker, probing at the thing from all sides, trying to find a way in and becoming increasingly impatient with it all. His hands had begun to shake from the strain he was putting himself through, and his body was begging for sleep, but he was relentless and it finally paid off at about four-thirty in the morning.

"HA!" he cried triumphantly, as the device hummed, there was a soft whoosh, and the apparatus opened up like some exotic flower, revealing a small compartment filled with a fine white powder. And it was steadily feeding the stuff straight into his blood-stream. This was not something covered in the health books. He'd never heard of something like this at all.

"Computer…What is that?"

"Caffeine," the terminal replied, sounding bored. "Stuff's all over the universe. That's a concentrated dose, though."

He didn't know it quite yet, but he had just discovered the most well-kept and darkest secret in Irken history, and it had been so carelessly stated. Zim's antennae quivered and then lay flat against his head, as sharp little claws dug hard into the arms of his chair. There was something that was eluding him, an awful revelation that he was trying to get his head around, but it kept dancing away from him.

Somehow, it made sense. The caffeine would explain the jittery, often high-strung behavior his people were known for, and their voracious love of snacks, and their height…and that's when it finally hit him. Caffeine stunted growth, and Irkens were particularly susceptible to its effects, and it was stunting the growth of every Irken in existence.

Except the Tallest.

Zim lurched up from his chair, breathing hard, as something else hit his Irken heart and made it race out of control and try to jump out through his throat. The Tallest, the _Almighty Tallest_, had been preordained. They didn't tower over everybody else because they were stronger, or tougher, or better like everyone thought—they had been _chosen_, just picked out from everybody else and _made _to be special.

No…that wasn't right. It was the rest of them that were made to be inferior.

And it was a complete and utter lie. Fake. Fake Tallests, all of them. Every single one.

They probably didn't even know it.

Zim looked down at his Pak, shaking hard and trying to compose himself, and glared at the caffeine generator. He wanted to rip it out. But he knew how addictive the stuff could be, and the high concentrate was potent—he didn't know what withdrawing cold turkey might do. Kill him, most likely. So he would have to go slow, and gradually lessen the amount the thing put into him, until he could handle stopping it altogether.

Then, slowly, a vicious zipper-grin spread across his face, and his eyes narrowed to dangerous crimson slits. At least now he would never be shorter than his rival ever again.

**_To be continued…_**

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**Yay! The second chapter of NIMH! I had a lot of fun writing this one—I just hope Zim's (roughly?) in character. I hope that he's at least interesting. He's one of my absolute favorites, not just out of the show, but in general. This chapter is really just my way of explaining how he gets taller. I'll move on with the story eventually…**

**Now, I jump around in time a bit in these first couple of chapters, so to clear up any confusions, the time right now is about a year after the show, but ten years before the first chapter. The next few installments will describe the goings on that lead up to Dib and how exactly he got on that operating table.**

**As for the story, I'm trying to make it different than all those other ZADR stories I've been reading. I've found some really good ones, but there are those that all seem to follow a set path—X number of years pass, Dib and Zim are described in all their hawt glory, and then either Dib loses faith in the human race, becomes uber uke and seeks solace in the loving and/or disdaining arms of Zim, _or_ Zim discovers his mission is a lie, gets all angsty and depressed, becomes uber uke and falls into the waiting arms of Dib immediately after. I should like to also note that there is hardly any build-up before all the kissing happens, and while most of the time I'm not complaining, I think in this story I'll try to refrain and let dear Dib and Zim get over their long-standing hatred of each other before they start snogging.**

**And I'll do all this while keeping them in character. Yeah. We'll see how that goes D:**

**Until next time,**

**Raha**


	3. All Grown Up

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH **

**Chapter Three: All Grown Up**

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"ZIM! Get the hell back here!" Dib roared, running at full tilt across the playground. It was Saturday, so their old skool was deserted. Zim skittered under the jungle-gym, feet kicking up gravel as he made for the swings.

"Not likely, Dib-stink!" he called over his shoulder, using his mechanical arms to vault himself towards the see-saw. Dib pushed to run faster, harder, his feet pounding the pavement and his heart drumming a solo against his ribcage, pumping out battery acid.

Zim glanced over his shoulder, noticed the boy was gaining on him, and urged himself to run faster. They'd chased each other all across town and back again so many times that he was a very good runner by now. But so was Dib.

It was strange how much things had changed in the last decade, and then stayed exactly the same. For instance, he had yet to destroy the Earth, thanks to Dib, frag him. But he was relentless, and _had_ managed to propagate rap in the entertainment industry by 35 percent, made reality TV shows more abundant, kept the cure for the common cold a secret, and exacerbate global warming so that in twenty or so years some places would become a little less pleasant to live in.

At least he'd gotten bigger, that was something. Naturally, being Zim, the only thing he did with the knowledge of the caffeine inhibiting his system was to give himself some height, having become completely single-minded in his utter refusal to be even an _inch _shorter than the Dib-beast. However, Zim was _so _focused on this one factor that he had not once thought to make himself any taller than the boy, either.

Over the years he'd been through several different wigs and looks and styles, mostly out of sheer boredom. He wore "earth" clothes when he was out or at school, namely to avoid getting his ass kicked for wearing pink (apparently, this had something to do with faggotry, though he was baffled as to why), but he still had a fondness for his Irken uniform as it was far more comfortable than the plant and/or animal-matter the humans had the audacity to call clothing. All in all, he had the comfortable, careless look of your average young adult. Personality-wise he was still the callous, irreverent, manipulative, pitiless, vindictive, obstinate little insect he'd always been.

Dib's outlook hadn't changed that much, either, considering he'd gained a dozen or so inches. Every other year or so he got a new coat, and added a few more buckles here and there. He'd not gotten a hair-cut lately, seeing as he was completely broke nowadays, so had it pulled back into what could be called a wolf's tail. But as time had gone by, he'd grown more and more embittered towards the world in general, contemptuous of humanity for its enduring stupidity, and disappointed in the people around him. It showed in the way he often looked down his nose at others, the disdain and bite of his voice, his impatience and ill-temper. Those who knew him avoided him, and those who didn't learned quickly to do so. It wasn't because he was considered crazy—not out loud, at least—but because he had the innate ability to make anyone he didn't like (which pretty much consisted of _everybody_) feel lower than dirt.

Everything considered, the both of them had grown up, though they were a far cry from the standard twenty-something year old.

A decade of being at one another's throats had honed and pounded them both to a razor's edge. Zim was lean and sharp and wiry, coiled tight and ready to spring at a moment's notice. He was terribly fast, with deadly accuracy, and ruthlessly unyielding. Dib, in comparison, was tough as nails, absolutely solid, and could take as much punishment as he could dish out, which, let it be said, was a considerable amount. He also threw a mean right hook, and had an innate understanding of a plethora of cool martial arts moves.

In fact, on more than one occasion Dib caught some girl eyeing him appreciatively and it was not an altogether unwelcome change. But he was so anti-social he had few friends, and even fewer intimate relationships.

Which was precisely the reason he now wanted to tear Zim's guts out.

"You've gone _too far_ this time!" Dib shouted. "I swear, Zim, I'll get you for this!"

"_Please_! There are plenty of other she-worms crawling around this stink-hole! I'm _sure_ you'll find another one willing exchange love-juices with!" Zim laughed.

"_We never went that far_!" Dib screeched shrilly, blushing despite himself. "And it's none of your business what I do with my girlfriend, anyway!"

"_Ex_-girlfriend!" the Irk corrected, jumping the fence.

"Thanks to _you_!" Dib shot back, hot on his heels. He was catching up. "I can't_ believe_ you actually—"

"Oh, come on, you and I both know why she dumped you," Zim snorted, his voice just dripping with sarcasm. "_You're _the one who didn't give her enough _love _and_ attention_. If you hadn't been chasing after _me_ all the time—"

"Shut up! Just _shut up_!" Dib shrieked, and leapt forward. He hit Zim's midriff head-on, and sent them both tumbling into the asphalt. "This is_ your_ fault!"

"…That and you're a loser," Zim said as an afterthought, deadpanning, and briefly rested his head almost thoughtfully in his hand. "Now get off Zim!" He lurched up, throwing Dib off his back, and glared hatefully at the boy. Dib glared right back, and then they'd shot to their feet in an instant and were sizing each other up, about to hurl into the fight that would end all fights, the ultimate battle, the one that would decide them _all_.

"This ends now, _Zim_," Dib hissed.

"Nice knowing you,_ Dib_," Zim snarled.

_Beep! Beep! Beep!_

And then, as it tends to do, life got in the way and suddenly the mood deflated like a popped balloon.

"Ah, crud, hold on," Dib said, exasperated, as he turned to fish in his back pocket for his cell phone.

"Yeah, sure," Zim shrugged, leaning nonchalantly against a nearby tree, and buffed his nails across his chest.

"Hello?" Dib said, his voice taking on a business-like tone. "Oh, hey. What? Huh. What's the situation? Uh-huh. How many? And how long were they dead? Right. Okay. Okay, yeah, I'll be there in a minute." He hung up.

"Bad news?" Zim said, completely unconcerned.

"It's always bad news."

"Yeah? And what's the '_situation'_?" the alien asked snidely, his fingers sketching quotations in the air.

"Car collision, just outside of town," Dib replied casually, speed-dialing for a cab.

Zim looked positively delighted. "Excellent!"

"You're despicable. And sick. You know that, right?" Dib said, giving the alien a scathing look. "And we're not done here. We'll finish this when I get back."

"Can't wait," Zim scoffed.

"God, I hate you."

"Zim hates you _more_!"

"Fair enough."

**_To be continued…_**

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**Well, I had to do it. I had to. Describing Zim and Dib's grown-up hawtness is a necessity in any grown-up ZADR. And after all the whining I did about it…God, I'm such a hypocrite. BUT! That will be the only stereo-typical ZADR thing I will do. So yeah, this is another build-up chappie, to introduce you to grown-up Dib and Zim. Now excuse me while I go drool over them…'specially Ziiiimmm…**

**Anyway. Thank you, microwaved noodles and TaylorTheWierd for your reviews! I'm so glad you're enjoying NIMH-always a little nervous how people will take a new story. So you all get where we are now? Ten years after chapter two, but before chapter one. Got it? Good. Just making sure. And FYI, Dib is now about twenty-three, if we're to believe he was twelve during the cartoon. Zim's age…well, he's just ancient.**

**As for the caffeine, it was just a stroke of genius. Maybe Zim'll chill out a bit, now. But not much—I love him just the way he is.**

**Peace out.**

**Raha**


	4. Elementary, My Dear Watson

**Invader Zim **

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Four: Elementary, My Dear Watson**

* * *

Dib scanned the scene, giving it hardly a glance, before he deduced that it had been a homicide. Or perhaps a possible suicide, though he could have thought of a million other less nasty ways to go. The car had driven under a billboard by the side of the road, and the two occupants' heads were lying about ten feet away.

"This is officer Callaway, reporting a car accident up on highway 81, going south—"

"This wasn't a car accident," Dib interrupted. Callaway cut off, giving the young man a slightly irritated look. The other two officers rolled their eyes. Dib ignored them.

"Oh? And just what makes you so sure?" he asked in clipped tones. "…_Detective_?"

"Because there are no skid marks," Dib replied curtly, with the patience and air of one accustomed to dealing with idiots on a day-to-day basis. Callaway bristled. "This was a set up. It's a _homicide_, officer."

"Well, it is right after a sharp corner, they might not have seen—" one of the other two, Officer Granger, started, but Dib cut her off.

"Come on, we're practically on a mountain side here," Dib said shortly. "Beyond that rail there's a sheer three hundred foot drop. I would assume they'd be taking it slow around these turns, meaning they would have had plenty of time to see it and stop. But as there are no skid marks, you can't be telling me they drove straight on and didn't think to apply the brake."

"But what makes you think it's _murder_?" Callaway snapped derisively.

"What would you call it?"

"It—maybe it's a suicide. They're young, it mighta been a…a cry for help, or sommat."

"A cry for _help_?" Dib repeated, not even trying to hide his scorn. "Well, there's no helping them now, is there, seeing as they're both dead. That, and the speed at which they would have to drive in order to cleanly sever their own heads would have been impossible to reach without careening over the edge first. Now, if this _had_ been a suicide, as you say, then why not just do exactly that? In my experience, those wishing for an end chose to do so in either the most painless way possible, or the flashiest. A drop like that would certainly be both, I'd wager."

"Can't rightly prove it, though, can you?" the third cop said, barely concealing his sneer.

"The key's missing."

"What?"

"The key isn't in the ignition, officer," Dib said, the smug smirk in his voice if not in his stoic expression. "Someone clearly hot-wired the vehicle, which I would assume is registered in the victims' names, and set this up to look like an accident. Or _suicide_, as you say."

"Wha—?" Callaway turned from Dib to investigate, puffing up indignantly in self-righteous fury. "Why didn't you tell me earlier, then?" he snapped, going red in the face at being made a fool of.

"A kid would have been able to figure _that _out."

"_Apparently so_," Callaway muttered.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite _catch_ that," Dib retorted with mocking sweetness. "Was that a scantily clad insult in reference to the fact that I'm _vastly_ younger than yourself? Why, I think it_ was_. Well, _thank you_ for that, Officer. I don't know_ what_ we would do without you blatantly pointing out the obvious."

"Er…" Callaway said, quailing under the weight of Dib's heavy dose of sarcasm.

"In fact, I'm going to suggest to the Major that they make you captain!" Dib grinned, though it was suspiciously predatory. "Then I suggest you change your name to _Blatantly Obvious_ just to clear up any confusion and save you the trouble of _constantly_ correcting people, as that's what they're going to call you anyway."

"I'm…uh…just gonna call this in, and, er…stuff…"

"You do that," Dib growled and marched away, feeling rather good about himself.

"Th-this is Officer Callaway, reporting a possible homicide on Highway 81, going south…"

.xXx.

Dib stepped into his apartment with a tired sigh, and closed the door quietly behind him. He was doing alright for himself; he'd found a nice little place near downtown and the Station. Though you wouldn't know by looking; Dib was notoriously messy, and something of a pack-rat, so his house was almost always trashed. Papers and photos from old cases were strewn across the kitchen table, stacked so high they were tumbling to the floor. The dishes were piling up in the sink. The garbage needed to be taken out. Dirty clothes had taken over his bed. His crap was everywhere.

Dib shoved a pile of junk over, flopped down on the couch, and turned on the telly, not out of any interest but because he needed some sort of background noise. The place got too quiet, otherwise. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open.

Inside, was a picture of his girlfriend, one of those taken at some cheap photo booth. Her name was Mary Sue, and she had red hair. They'd been seeing each other for the last three months. He sighed again, loudly, and pulled the picture from its sleeve, crumpled it in a ball and threw it in the general direction of the trash can. He hated to admit it, bit Zim had been right, in a way. Dib had been so wrapped up in chasing the alien, and chasing the bad guys, that he'd forgotten to chase anything else, such as a relationship. They'd been going down hill for weeks, and if Zim hadn't decided to show her that photoshop of Dib in Play Girl Magazine, she probably would have dumped him soon anyway.

With a low growl, Din lurched up from his seat and went to the fridge for a beer. All he wanted was to have some semblance of a normal life every now and then, was that too much to ask for? A steady girlfriend, a real career, maybe a yellow Camaro with black racing stripes some day…

But he could never switch off. If he wasn't obsessing about how to find the latest psycho-murderer-rapist, he was obsessing about how to expose Zim and have his guts laid out before the press.

When Dib was fifteen, he'd stopped wanting to become a paranormal investigator. No, a part of him still wished to be one, that childish little boy that had been buried under years of disappointment, and cynicism, and heartache. But it just wasn't practical, and he knew he had to own up to reality. He knew the paranormal existed, Zim was living proof of that, but trying to prove it to everyone else…it just wasn't practical. He knew now that most childhood dreams weren't. And you couldn't support yourself chasing a dream. So he lived with what he had, and moved on with his life.

His skills of deduction and sharp perception had come in handy in other fields, and he found he was quite adept at detective work. He'd joined the Force at eighteen, and despite his young age he'd excelled in it, graduating an entire year early with honors. Most, if not all, of his colleagues were resentful of him for it, a fact he wasn't unaware of. As such, his life was much the same as it had been when he was in skool. Now, though, people didn't avoid him because they thought he was crazy—they avoided him because they hated him.

Some days, he wished they'd go back to thinking he was crazy.

However, there was one thing that hadn't changed, and that was Zim. Throughout the years, no matter what happened, he never stopped chasing the Irken. Of course, life got in the way sometimes, and that damn pager had foiled many sure victories and near-catches. But Zim was the one remaining piece of his childhood, a reminder of things long gone.

There was a connection, a link between the two that bound them tighter and closer than anything else could. They knew the other more than they knew themselves, every strength and weakness, every twitch and movement and look. They understood one another so well they didn't even need to speak anymore. One glance, and that was all it took. They could draw each other in their sleep. Born of hatred, of the innate conflict of good and evil, it had grown into something else. Something deeper, like obsession. Dib wasn't all that sure that it was only hatred he felt for the alien, anymore. He detested the Irken, but he'd developed something of a healthy, albeit grudging, respect for Zim, and held a resentful admiration for his utter refusal to _give it up_ if nothing else.

**_To be continued…_**

* * *

**Here's some more catching up with dear old Dib, and what he's been doing with his life. If he didn't like aliens and ghouls so much, I think this is probably what he would want to be when he grew up. Also, I have no clue how one goes about becoming a detective, other than what I've seen on TV, so I'm really just making it up as I go along. So, since Dib is a detective and not an actual Officer that explains why he called a cab in the last chapter and not a cruiser. That, and because I said so. Well, I mean, I guess he could get a cruiser if he wanted…**

**Moving right along. I HAVE TWELVE REVIEWS! I'm soooo **_**happy**_**. Thank you so much, to those of you who reviewed! Everyone, review some more! Come on, push that button. You know you wanna. Please? I'm begging here—I **_**need**_** praise and attention. **

**Okay that's enough groveling for today. Imma gonna go work on chapter five now, and guess what? That's when the actual plot happens! Yay, development! **

**That's all for now. **

**Raha **


	5. Massive Mutiny

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH  
**

**Chapter Five: Massive Mutiny  
**

* * *

Cerebrum, like most Irken cities, was a veritable rat-maze of a labyrinth. It was also one of the biggest and most populated, constantly changed, and even with their internal guidance systems there were still some Irkens that got lost. However, there was one who moved with a purpose in his goose-step. His suit was pressed, his boots were polished, and his antennae for poised at exactly the right angle. His hands were folded behind his back, stiff and straight, and his plebeian head was held high and haughty. Not a stitch was out of place. As most Irkens went, he was pretty average. His eyes weren't an odd color, but the usual red. He was tall enough that he wasn't programmed to be a table- or food-service drone, but his height wasn't impressive enough to warrant any special attention, either. His clothes were just like everyone else's, only he wore a white lab coat to indicate he was a technician of some sort. The Irken insignia on his shoulder indicated he was military, but of a low rank. All in all, this Irken did not really stand out from his fellows in any way, shape, or form.

No one would know that in his pocket he held a device that had the capability to change the fate of the universe. It was not a death-ray or some other form of messy explosive, but rather it was a few lines of data all neatly stored on a simple USB drive. Rather, it was a few lines of _very bad_ data. A virus, to be exact; the most dangerous and deadly infection to have ever fouled Irken history. He intended to use it to bring the Empire to its knees, and he was going to start with the Tallest.

The technician had stumbled upon this little bit of information quite on accident. There had been an incident some years ago regarding a certain Invader, one the Control Brains were still reeling from. As he was the Head Programmer at the time, he had been charged with the near-insurmountable task of cleaning out the systems...and that's when it had struck him, and not just figuratively. Something had gone wrong, and the technician had received a jolt of electricity so powerful it had knocked out nearly six blocks. It had taken his Pak nearly three hours to restart him. After a quick systems check to make sure everything was in working order, the technician suddenly had an Idea. Soon that Idea had formulated into a Plan. And now the Plan was quickly accelerating into an Action.

It was almost laughably easy. The Control Brains were subject to frequent maintenance to keep their impossibly enormous programs free of Spam and running at full capacity. The technician had clearance, and he watched with almost detached interest as the thick steel doors whooshed open and a fog of cold air crept across the floor. The technician moved forward into the dark recesses of the room, noting the quiet hum of the computers lining the wall and the blotchy shadows of the Control Brains hovering in the murky dark. It was a simple task to send the jittery Irken currently tangled up in a mess of wires on his way.

"I've been sent to relieve you," the technician informed the muttering, snarling smaller. With an audible snap, the Irken's head whirled around and fixed him with a pair of the bluest eyes he'd ever seen. The technician's lip curled, showing just the barest edge of teeth. Quietly, his Pak opened and pushed the muzzle of a gun into his hand. _Not yet... _"In fact, there's a batch of faulty SIR units I believe needs your attention."

"Uhm, y-yes," the smaller replied, trying to extricate himself as fast as he could, and squirming under the frigid glare of the technician's red eyes. "Yeah, I'll just...go take care of that."

"I can take over from here," the technician said curtly, waving his hand in dismissal. The smaller nodded and scurried out of the room, the technician watching him go with an unreadable expression. Then he turned on his heel, pulling the USB from his pocket and inserting it into the drive of the nearest Control Brain. There were only three in this city, and the data in his possession was limited. But the Empire was weak and it was failing and the technician knew exactly where to hit it.

**:IRKEN MAR, YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED:**

Mar watched a nearby monitor, his eyes roving over the streaming lines of data and following as the virus slowly began to take a hold. In the back of his mind he could feel the Brains pressing down on him. But he was beyond their control, now.

"Don't fuss," he told the now shuddering machine behind him. The corners of his mouth quirked upwards into a smirking smile. "Just relax. It'll be over soon, and you won't have to worry about anything, ever again. Fighting will only make this harder, I assure you."

The Control Brains fought anyway, but the virus was soon overwhelming them, and Mar watched with quiet satisfaction as their struggles slowed and finally died.

"There, you see?" he chuckled. "Everything's fine. Now, I'll need you to send a transmission to the Massive. I'd like to have a little talk with the Almighty Tallest."

.xXx.

"One, two, three…Go!"

Tallest Red and Tallest Purple each drew a card from the pack and stuck it to their foreheads.

"Ohoho, you are in _trouble_," Red laughed. Purple's card was a pathetic three of duos. "How much you wanna bet, Pur? Higher or lower?"

"Oh, definitely higher," Purple said, smirking at Red's piddling two of rooks. They were playing a game the Strato-Centaurians called Snapp, from whom they'd actually stolen the idea of cards, which happened to be universal and could be found among any remotely intelligent society. But of course, Irkens were far above _inventing_ things—such a task was for inferior beings.

"Uhm…My Tallest…?"

The two rulers looked over at the little Irken lingering uncertainly in the doorway, both grinning in good nature. They were lounging in one of the many comfort rooms aboard the Massive, fully furnished with soft chairs and deep couches, a wide-screen TV that covered one entire wall (complete with surround sound and the biggest sub-woofers anyone had ever seen), and a refrigerator stocked with a surplus of snacks. In the corner was an impressive puppet stage, along with an assortment of toys, hand-held video games, and several A-grade Mega-Death Plasmar-Blasters™, guaranteed to explode your enemies in one hit or your money back!

"Yeah? What is it?" Red asked. The smaller hesitated, thrown off by how silly his leaders looked, but he recovered himself quickly.

"My Tallest…the Control Brains are requesting your presence."

That was weird. The Control Brains never required the presence of a Tallest unless it was for something important—which was rarely good—and neither of them had ever been summoned, or even seen their overlords except once or twice during their reign.

Red glanced at Purple in uneasy confusion, and found his partner looking back at him with the exact same expression. Then, without a word, they both rose and headed towards to the transport room, to be teleported down to Irk. They arrived in Cerebrum, the headquarters to the Irken Armada second to the Massive, and found that utter havoc surrounded them on all sides. Smallers swarmed about the main hall like ants, each tending their own tasks in a kind of controlled chaos. The Tallest hadn't been expected, and for a few moments they were ignored as Irkens streamed around them, obliviously going about their business.

It wasn't until smaller technician Nevil nearly ran into Red that they were finally noticed.

Forced to a halt, Nevil jerked back from the thing that blocked his way to the teleportation pods. He was already late, and his nerves had been tested once today by a new batch of faulty SIR units, so when he was stopped he snapped his teeth in irritation and glared up at the whatever-it-was that stood in his path, sky-blue eyes narrowed furiously. But his snarls died in his throat when he realized who it was.

"M-my Tallest…!" he squeaked shrilly, catching the attention of the Irkens around him. The reaction was instantaneous. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity, Irkens running right and left, tripping over themselves to make their Tallest happy. A Taller shoved Nevil roughly aside, and approached Red and Purple.

"Tallest Red, Tallest Purple, my apologies, you were unanticipated," he said, his antennae lowering respectfully. "Major Ozinn, Sirs. What brings you to Irk, might I ask?"

"We are here to see the Control Brains," Red replied, unfazed by all the commotion. The Taller paused, his brows lifting in surprise, and then nodded tersely.

"Right this way, My Tallest."

Ozinn turned and escorted them through the crowd, which parted at once, towards the elevators that would take them directly to the heart of Cerebrum, deep underground, where the Control Brains were waiting. All too soon they stood before a large steel door, watching as the locks whirred and clicked and spun into place, and then the whole thing opened up with a metallic hiss. Fog streamed out across the floor and over their feet, followed by a cold rush of air.

The Brains preferred the cold, unlike their subjects which required warmer climates to function, and even with their Paks regulating temperature, the three Irkens still shivered uncomfortably. Red shook himself, the first to recover, and moved forward.

Only, somebody had gotten there first.

The shadows and mist shifted, congealing sluggishly around the smaller that stepped from the gloom, his eyes glittering through the haze.

"Greetings, My Tallest," he said, his voice soft as silk.

"You are not authorized," Ozinn snapped, stepping forward aggressively, and only too late did he notice the gun in the other's hand. "Hey, wait, you can't—"

But he was cut off when the smaller shot him in the chest. The silencer prevented a loud retort, so there was only a quiet _pht_, and then Ozinn fell with a strangled noise as the bullet punched through his ribcage and shattered his Pak on exit. Purple gagged as splatter and shrapnel sprayed across his robes, and Red stared straight down through the dead Irken to the floor below and the pool of dark green blood that was spreading steadily outwards. His own was slowly turning to icy sludge, and his gaze flicked uneasily between Ozinn and the unknown smaller.

His brain couldn't seem to wrap itself around what had happened, and for two very big reasons. The first was that purposefully murdering another Irken was Strictly Prohibited. Any killing not authorized by the Control Brains was punishable by death, and not just by flinging them out an airlock. It meant total and complete deactivation. The second was that he and Purple were the Tallest. _Nobody_ threatened the Tallest, and it wasn't just because they were protected at all times by a Special Guard. The Guard was a formality, really, because _no _Irken would hesitate to lay down their life to defend their beloved leaders. The mere thought of attacking a Tallest was absolutely unthinkable. Literally. The Control Brains and the Paks kept such a thought from even occurring. But apparently it had occurred to this one.

The smaller took a step back to keep the blood from getting on his polished boots.

"A shame," he said with a shake of his head. "Ozinn made a good soldier. Ah well, sacrifices must be made, I suppose." With that, he smiled coolly up at the Tallest with sharp white zipper-teeth, the gun now trained right between Purple's eyes as he gestured politely for them to step inside.

"Move," he said. Wordlessly, the two Tallest hurried forward, and the steel doors slid shut with a snap.

"What on Irk do you think you're doing?" Purple demanded, his voice strained and low. "This is mad, holding your Tallest at gun point!"

"I am Irken Mar," the smaller said, ignoring Purple, and inclined his head in the slightest of nods. "And I am taking your place."

**_To be continued…_**

* * *

**I LOVE SCRUBS! Seriously, I'm absolutely addicted to that show. Dr. Cox is my favorite character ever. The other day I thought I saw him and nearly had a heart attack. So yeah, the first scene with the cards is a nod to Scrubs, and particularly to Dr. Cox and his brother-in-law/best friend, Ben. God, love them. Older Dib has picked up some of his mannerisms, like the oft disdainful ranting. They like to talk. **

**So yes, the plot thickens, and look! A cliffie! Hooray.**

**The next one should be coming soon, I just wanna go play outside right now. Even though it's, like, thirty degrees. I get restless. **

**Also, I edited chapter three as of January 18, 2008—nothing big, just check out their descriptions. **

**That's all for now, folks.**

**Raha**


	6. Vermin of the World

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Six: Vermin of the World**

* * *

Tallest Red stared down the muzzle of a loaded gun, and for the first time in his long life he _felt_ his mortality—inevitable, undeniable, encompassing—and realized that there was nothing he could do. Decades of indolence, of having everything handed to him, of exploiting every luxury had made him soft and weak and vulnerable. He never needed to lift a finger, or help himself, or even _walk_ around on his own because they had servants and machines and anti-gravity generators installed in their Paks for that type of thing.

But Mar was Military and there was an irresistible power in that frame, a sharp cruelty in those crimson eyes that struck them cold. He'd tasted blood before. He might have been a smaller—by a few worrying inches—but Red had no doubt he could rip out their spines. They had no chance.

"Y-you're taking…our place?" he asked, barely able to believe what was happening. His heart was fluttering in his chest like a weak little bird, making him dizzy and light-headed with vertigo, and in his gut his squeedly-spooch writhed. Beside him, Purple was mouthing silently in stunned protest, but couldn't seem to find the words to express his utter disbelief. "But you're…you're _short_."

"How observant," Mar replied, his voice a hissing purr, and Red stiffened at his contempt. "But soon, that isn't going to matter."

"What do you mean…?" Purple asked, his antennae quivering and at attention. The room felt charged with energy, and he could feel the presence of the Control Brains lurking in the fog and the dark, massive intangible forms shifting in and out of focus. "The-the Control Brains will never…"

"Oh, I've dealt with them," Mar smiled, and held up a small USB drive for the Tallest to see. "This contains a virus. Or rather, it _contained_ a virus. In fact, the only one that was _ever_ able to overthrow our precious overlords."

Red and Purple glanced at one another, scrabbling to remember what on Irk Mar was talking about—and then it suddenly hit them. The Existence Evaluations, a trial every Irken underwent before the Control Brains and their Tallest, one that judged them and everything they'd done. If they passed, they got to live; if not, their Paks were wiped and their bodies thrown to the pigs. Or the equivalent, thereof.

But there was one—just _one_—who had failed, and still lived, because when the Control Brains had gone to erase him they'd overloaded with the sheer amount of defective data, and crashed. No, they hadn't just crashed. They'd gone completely and utterly _insane._

"_**Zim.**_"

"Very good," the smaller murmured, and his smile widened, baring a mouth full of sharp zipper-teeth. "At the time, I was Chief Encoder, and it fell to me to repair the damage. However, I made a copy of those codes, which I uploaded fifteen minutes ago, straight into the Control Brains' cerebral cortex. It was _easy_. Now the Control Brains answer to me, and thereby, so do you, _my Almighty Tallest._"

"But—but why would you—" Purple stammered, only to cut off sharply when Mar stepped up close, too close, and gently tucked the gun snug beneath his chin.

"Because this world is rotting," he whispered, soft and cold and deadly. "Can't you feel it, Tallest? Can't you see it? It's a great black pit, filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it. Everywhere, everywhere—it's dying all around you. _Listen_!"

"Irk, what are you talking about?" Purple shrilled in nearly hysterical distress, trying to edge away from the smaller and his intensity, but Mar grabbed a fistful of his robes and yanked him back and down, so that he could stand above the Tallest.

"_Imperfection,_" he hissed, with revulsion and scorn. "_Defects._ They permeate the streets with their filth, they bring down our race with their flaws and failings, they hinder the Irken Machine. They're everywhere, Tallest, there are so many."

"…There are…?" Purple asked weakly.

"Oh, yes. They're even aboard the Massive…They pilot our ships, and repair our machines, and kill our enemies," Mar replied, his voice low and guttural, and then it dropped to barely a whisper as he brought the gun up and lightly ran the muzzle down Purple's cheek. "…They even give us orders."

Purple shuddered under the heady caress of steel, his breath catching in his throat, and every muscle seized as understanding dawned.

"…_Wh-what_?"

"That's absurd!" Red exploded, suddenly furious, as he grabbed Purple by the shoulder and jerked him out of Mar's grasp. "Purple is your _Almighty Tallest_, not some foul, sonovaglitch _defect_!"

"A defect is a physical problem in the machine," Mar said, as if reciting from a text, while he brushed imaginary dust from his front and straightened his uniform. "Especially one that prevents it from functioning correctly; a feature of something that is regarded as inadequate; an imperfection in an otherwise perfect structure."

He looked at Purple then, right into his eyes.

"One could say that a defect is a deviation," he said. "Something that opposes the norm. And what is the norm? Green skin, antennae, two fingers and opposable thumb on each hand, three toes, claws, Paks…and _red_ eyes."

"What, you're saying just because I have purple eyes I'm defective?" Purple asked, incredulous.

"I believe that every physical flaw reflects the deeper ones, the ones we _can't_ see," Mar replied. "For instance, the fact that you turn a blind eye to the inadequacies of your subjects…so does that not make you, yourself, inadequate?"

"I—"

"You sit upon your pedestal and make no _effort_ to run your empire, instead opting to gorge your slovenly self and leave the work to others."

"That's not—"

"By doing so, you've nearly run your own Empire into the ground. Whilst you concentrate on the subjugation of _other_ races, lounging up in the Massive, your _own_ has festered and putrefied within itself. The economy on Irk has plummeted, pestilence has pervaded the cities, and your people are starving."

Mar paused, regarding the Tallest with a harsh stare that seemed to penetrate everything, and something in Red's chest quailed, stirring up an emotion he didn't recognize, because before now he had never been afraid. Truly afraid.

"But no longer," the smaller snarled. "No longer. This world, the Irken Empire, will belong to a _new_ order now." And his eyes were brightly burning. "_My _order."

"You're _mad_," Red whispered. "You're barking _mad_. No one is going to listen to you. You aren't the tallest, _we _are!"

"Oh, but it's not me they'll be listening to," Mar chuckled breezily. "It's the Control Brains, and whatever they say, I'm sure the Empire will heed without question."

Then Mar snapped his fingers, and the three unmoving, unresponsive behemoths behind him came to life.

**:GUARDS: **They said, all in unison, their Voice booming throughout the large circular room and crashing off the walls, echoing on echoes. Or maybe they only heard it in their heads. **:TO THE CONTROL ROOM. SEIZE TALLEST PURPLE:**

The reaction was almost instantaneous. The steel doors rushed open, and Irkens stormed in to surround Red and Purple…and then they hesitated. Incapacitate their Tallest? But the Brains pressed down on them, and they could not disobey. Hands grabbed Purple and pulled his arms behind his back, forcing him to the ground as a pair of cuffs were slapped on his wrists. Red cried out, angry and horrified, and tried to reach out to his co-ruler, but he was blocked. Purple was howling and crying, out of his mind with terror, which protested again and again that this couldn't be real, this couldn't be happening, not to _him_. He lashed out, striking at the Irkens around him, but they shook him off easily and he was being dragged away from Red.

And then something struck the back of his head, and the world went black. Red screamed.

"Get off me!" he bellowed, slashing viciously at the two Irkens that had been holding him back. They staggered back, nursing deep oozing wounds, and didn't dare approach him again, their heads lowered in shame.

"It's alright, Red," murmured a soft, soothing voice in his antennae, and Mar's hand came down on his shoulder. Red froze, his head snapping back to stare at Mar, and upon meeting those blood-red eyes, his insides shriveled and every muscle melted with the fear bubbling through his veins. And then something pressed on his mind, something irresistible, irrefutable, and it dragged him slowly down...

"Everything's going to be alright, now, you don't have to worry. It's not your fault; he was just bringing you down. But I'm going to make everything all better. It's going to be okay, now. _Everything_…_will be_…_okay_."

**_To be continued…_**

* * *

**Woo! That was fun! **

**I just love the Tallest, there's something about them that intrigues me, so I had to write them in. They're like little kids, always having people take care of them, and their love of snacks and puppet shows. Of course, I'll get back to Zim and Dib next chapter, but these two will definitely show up later. **

**Also, I made a few references here. The Existence Evaluations are real, as seen in the cancelled episode, "The Trial". Basically, the Tallest stepped up the date of Zim's evaluation in an attempt to off him. So you get a lot of Zim background, which is wonderful, and mostly consists of him blowing shit up. It looks hopeless for the little guy, but when the Brains go to erase him he actually does overload their systems with all his bad data, making them go insane. They announce that he's the greatest Irken ever, and that he can drive the Massive. No kidding. It was awesome. **

**So yeah, I figured if any of that data was copied, it could easily be used against the Control Brains, which is exactly what Mar did. He's also pretty high up in the military, so he also had access to the mainframe, and the stuff he couldn't get into he just hacked. If you wanna read the screenplay for the "The Trial", and others, go to www dot roomwithamoose dot com.**

**Another thing, Mar's line, "It's a great black pit, filled with people who are filled with shit, and ****the vermin of the world inhabit it" was taken from** _**Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.**_ **I loved it so much, I had to use it somewhere. The movie is a musical with Johnny Depp! and Alan Rickman! And it's R rated, so if you're over 18 and like a lot of blood spray, go see it! It's fantastic, and Depp's voice will make any girl ruin her panties. **

**Thanks to everyone who's reviewed! I love you all! Please keep 'em coming, cause you know I thrive off it. It keeps me going. And again, if you notice any spelling errors, please let me know.**

**Signing out,**

**Raha**


	7. Beginning of the End

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Seven: Beginning of the End**

* * *

Dib awoke to find that his cat, Sammy, was sleeping on his face. He shoved the feline aside, who yowled indignantly in drowsy protest, and sat up with a groan. He yawned, stretched, scratched himself. Then he lurched to his feet and headed for the shower. Sammy arched his spine, digging his little claws into the mattress a couple times before he curled up on Dib's pillow, in the indentation where his head had been. He was still there when Dib came back fifteen minutes later.

"Lazy cat," he muttered, with a shake of his head. He'd found the orange-and-white Sammy as a kitten on his doorstep a couple years back, fed him once, and he just never left. Now he was a fat, languid, contented house cat who loved Dib unconditionally when he got fed or when it was convenient.

Dib padded into the kitchen, stifling another yawn, and checked his refrigerator to see if any food had appeared there since yesterday. It hadn't. But he found an old, stale bagel in the cupboard, and some left-over cream cheese he was sure should have expired by now. But it smelled alright, so he decided he'd take the risk and spread it over his breakfast while he made space at the table.

He didn't have work today, and that prospect alone made him restless. He was a terrible workaholic and never knew what to do with himself during his free-time. His eyes wandered over the case files spread haphazardly around him, and for a moment his fingers twitched toward them, considering, before he shook his head. It was this sort of behavior, the inability to _shut off_ that had lost him Mary Sue, and he'd promised himself he'd take a break. He shoved the chair back and pitched to his feet. He needed some air—maybe he'd go to the park, or catch a movie.

'_I heard Sweeney Todd was pretty good,'_ Dib mused as he tugged his coat off it's hook, slung it around his shoulders, and was half-way out the door before he realized he was this close to smacking straight into his little sister.

"Jesus!" he screeched, and promptly slammed the door in her face.

Huge mistake.

"Oh, you did _not_ just do that," Gaz snarled, and Dib could have sworn her fury was tangible, since it was spilling in through the key hole and twining menacingly up his arms. _Eep-_ing, he quickly jerked the door open and regarded her a moment, trying to regain his lost composure.

"I'm sorry, for second there I…I thought I saw the Devil," he explained breathlessly. Gaz just rolled her eyes and swept in past him, lowering the temperature by about ten degrees, as if even that too was cowering in her presence. She cast a cursory look about his apartment, before throwing him a dry glare over her shoulder.

"Looks like something exploded in here," she informed him haughtily, by way of greeting. "You seriously _live_ in this hell hole?"

"Well, hello to you, too," Dib replied conversationally, smiling in polite interest to cover his smirk. "I'm doing quite well, thank you for asking. Yourself?"

"Oh, please _stop_ with the sarcasm crap," she told him in a long-suffering way. "Afraid to burst your bubble there, but you're not funny. Not at_ all._"

"Oh, yeah, that_ really _hurt," Dib smirked. "My heart's bleeding here."

"Whatever. Going somewhere?" she asked, eyeing his coat.

"Why, yes, actually, I was just about to—"

"No, does it look like I care?" she asked, cutting him off. "You're coming with me today, and don't argue or I'll kill you."

"I'm sorry, when did I agree to this?" he demanded.

"See, now I have to kill you," Gaz said, with a shake of her head and a look of 'look what you did'. But then she considered him again and saw he was serious. "Ah, you _do_ know what day it is, _right_?" she asked, grinding her teeth.

He frowned, feeling the beginnings of real annoyance.

"Well, _sweetheart_, I do believe it's the 16th of September," he replied. "To be more specific, it's a Wednesday, and oh! If you _really_ want to get into all the _gritty_ details, it's also the day Mexico gained its independence. Is there anything else—really, anything at all—you need to know, or do you just enjoy wasting my time?"

"Yeah, could you _be_ a bigger ass?" Gaz asked.

"Could your ass get any bigger?" Dib shot back. "I mean, my _God_, woman! Cut down on the pizza, would you please? I doubt that with the way you stuff your face on all that grease and cheese you're _ever_ going to fit back into those tight little jeans you keep hidden in your closet—"

"God, I swear you can be _such_ a _girl_, the way you just go on and on and _on_," Gaz cried, exasperated. "You're like the thing that won't shut up. Oh, and you missed something, Nancy Drew."

"What?" Dib snapped irritably.

"It's Pizza Day."

'_Damn.'_

Pizza Day was Gaz's way of staying in touch. She never called or visited, save for once or twice a month when they got together at Bloaty's. He didn't think she could stand to be near him any longer than that.

"Oh…right," he said, feeling a small twinge of guilt. "I forgot about that…"

"Just come on, I'd like to get this over with," she said huffily, and he followed her sheepishly out the door.

.xXx.

Zim awoke to find that his robot, Gir, was sleeping on his face. Well, pretending to sleep at any rate. The second Gir noticed the Irken was awake, he opened his mouth and let out the most horrible alarm-noise in the world, like something between an ambulance siren and a bipolar rooster. Snarling, Zim hurled the robot across the room, and rolled over with a groan. Gir hit the wall with a metallic splat and slid to the floor, giggling cheerfully to himself.

"I love those breaking noises…" he said giddily. Zim pulled the pillow over his head.

"Gir, get out," he snapped. "I told you I don't want to ever deal with your idiocy until after ten. It is now ten till nine."

"YOU WANT SOME BACON?" Gir shrieked.

"_No, _Gir," Zim said, gritting his teeth very hard in an attempt to be patient. "I don't want any bacon. I want you to _leave_."

"But I put coffee in it, juuuuust the way you like!" the robot sang. He was still upside down from where he'd landed, and was kicking his feet in the air.

"NO. OUT."

"Ovaltine?"

"NO, GIR!" Zim shouted. He'd never been all that patient, really. "I WANT YOU GONE! NOW! NOWNOWNOW!"

"Okay," Gir chirped, flopped over and skipped from the room. Zim hissed a sigh through his teeth, and tried to go back to sleep, when his actual alarm went off. Oh, right. He had classes today. Growling, he considered whether he really wanted to go. He was majoring in mechanical engineering, but he could have tested out any time he wanted (honestly, the things these humans had the gall to call_ technology_…), so it was really just an excuse to keep himself busy. Otherwise, he would have gone stir-crazy ages ago. That, and it was the perfect way to study this dirt-ball's weaponry and electronics—on the first day alone, at a cursory glance, he'd spotted tons of weaknesses and things he could exploit in order to finally end these pitiful monkeys.

Well, he was already up. So, with much grumbling to himself, he rolled out of bed and went about his usual morning routine. It rarely changed, or deviated in the slightest from the day before. First off and foremost, a dust bath to keep his skin from gathering any toxic earth-moisture, and a light coat of glue to keep him from burning up in the rain. Press out his uniform, pull it on. Ease the kink out of his left antenna because sometime in the night he'd rolled over and slept on it. Then breakfast, all sugar and sweet-things, and coffee after that. Not the drink, the beans. He couldn't get enough of them, really.

Since he'd stopped up the caffeine in his Pak, he'd found himself slowing down. Once before, a long time ago, he hadn't even needed sleep. It was so strange. He remembered a well of energy, all taut and crackling, threatening to shake him to pieces if he didn't _do _something with it, now, immediately, at once. He remembered late nights—or were they early mornings?—of sitting before his consoles, nestled deep down in his base, and planning. He remembered the twitch-snap force, shivering along muscles and feeding right into his heart, filling him to bursting.

It was still there, but…diminished. Sleeping, like a living thing. It only reared up when his blood boiled with adrenaline, when everything was on the line, when he was locked into Dib and the world was shattering all around. And when it lay back down, curling up deep in his gut, something in his head opened up and he could _think_. He could think before, of course, but it was clearer now than ten years ago. It wasn't fogged over, or fuzzed out, or beaten down by the sheer amount of pressure that screamed through his veins every second of every minute of every hour of the day and on into the night.

But without those shots of sugar, or the jump-start of raw coffee beans, any sort of energy quickly sputtered and died. He got tired too easily, and it was so hard to wake up in the mornings, but he knew it was worth it to be taller. He grabbed another handful of beans, crunching them to dust in his teeth, and thought about how to crush the world, and torment the Dib, about calling the Tallest, and could dolphins really be inter-galactic travelers from space? He would have to look in on that. They might prove useful.

Then it was time to go, and he was reaching for the door, and that's when the alarms went off.

"I didn't do it!" Gir screamed, and dived under the couch.

"Don't be stupid, Gir," Zim snapped distractedly. "Those are proximity alerts."

And then he realized what he'd said, and came to a screeching halt. Proximity alerts. A ship had just entered the solar system. With a strange, strangled noise he turned on his heel and bolted for the trash can, classes forgotten. The elevator couldn't have gone any slower, and when it finally opened he tumbled out and rushed for the computer.

"What is it? What is it?" he demanded, wary and tense and alert. He was trembling, and his skin crawled and his entire nervous system flared, his heart ballooning with wild hope, all anxious and fluttering like a little winged insect. His antennae pricked, standing nearly upright, and slightly twitching in convulsive starts to the quick tick-tock in his chest. Outlanders never came this way—this part of the galaxy was too quiet, too empty, and (this was unbeknownst to Zim) most in the Milky-Way knew to stay far from Earth and the violently psychotic monkey-people that lived there. Those that knew of humans knew to leave them well enough alone, and those that didn't either learned it fast, or just didn't stick around long enough to find out.

But could it be _them_? Could they have come, after all this time? The computer was taking forever—several mili-seconds, in fact—before it finally gave a little cough, indicating it had come up with an answer.

"There are three big ships coming this way," it said, in a bored manner that suggested it couldn't have cared less.

"Yes, yes, but what are they?" Zim all but howled, banging impatiently on the console.

"They're Irken—the Armada!" the computer cried hastily. "Would you please stop hitting me?"

It hadn't needed to ask. At the word "Irken" Zim froze. He hardly dared to breathe, or maybe he just couldn't. Everything came to a dead stop, and the room seemed to almost jump and shudder to his eyes—unfocused—and his antennae—rigid and quivering. He felt as if his guts had just dropped out onto the floor, or that his head had suddenly floated to the ceiling, and nothing in his brain was making sense.

The Armada. They were_ here_. They were _here_, after all this time, and Zim could do little more than just stand there and stare, caught off guard and completely overthrown by the things his mind was reeling with.

But he knew that something had just come to an end.

**_To be continued…_**

* * *

**Disclaimer: Death to those who claim Invader Zim, if be they not the creators!  
**

**It's the calm before the storm, and all the shit's about to hit the fan. And wow, this was a bit longer, wasn't it? Hope you enjoyed it. I'm really itching to get to where I want this to go, and there's more Zim and Dib goodness coming up next. Hooray! **

**As you saw from this chappie, I decided Gaz is gonna tag along for the ride, too. I like her—she's a lot like me, but way more antisocial and morbid. I like her in this, she's got the same sort of biting sarcasm Dib does, but instead of crushing you slowly beneath an on-going rant, she just stabs you through the heart with a quick one-liner. Instant death. **

**Also, I made tasty brownies, so if you review you can have one!**

**Raha**


	8. Impending Doom

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Eight: Impending Doom**

* * *

For what might have been the first time in his life, Zim felt somehow torn, and in too many directions at once. He fell back into his chair with a shuddering breath, his hands clenching and unclenching in spasmodic reflex. It occurred to him that he ought to be happy.

And a part of him was. It wanted to jump into the stars and scream to the skies—they were coming! They were finally, finally _coming_! After all this time, after all his effort and dedication and not-giving-up, he would be able—at _long_ last—to rain down real destruction, the Massive's death-lasers from space kind, upon this festering, putrid, disgusting stink-pit and the rotting things that lived there. Finally, the humans were going to burn. Burn, burn, burn, burn, _burn_!

He could have laughed out loud, or shouted, or danced, or…or _something_.

But he couldn't. Because there was a voice in his head, one that was howling and clawing at the walls of his skull, so completely unintelligible that for a moment he couldn't understand what it was saying. And then he realized that he was angry—he was _angry_—because he had put in all that effort and dedication and not-giving-up, and they were just going to come in and raze the place to the ground in less than five minutes.

They wouldn't even have to enter the atmosphere.

Zim snapped his teeth, a feral snarl building up deep in his chest to stick solidly in his throat, and for a wild moment wild thoughts that weren't making sense began to coagulate in his brain. Things like _'How dare they' _and _'It's mine' _and _'I'll rip their guts out,'_—when something sitting in the back of his mind pressed down on him, so subtly he hardly noticed it was there, but it was cold and metallic and unyielding, and told him quietly that he was starting down a path it did not like.

**:You must obey: **it said, from some dark corner of his subconscious, where he couldn't directly look at it, disguised as instinct or his own compellation. **:You must be loyal:**

And then another voice, one that was cold and metallic and plugged into the wall, asked him, "_But isn't that _supposed_ to happen?"_ Hadn't that been the plan all along? He was an Invader, he reminded himself, and it was his job to do reconnaissance, to ready the planet for take over. If he just happened to take over the planet himself, well…that was an added bonus. He knew that. Once the Earth was under Irken Rule—and at the mercy of the entire Armada, he fully expected this pitiful insignificant little planet to readily crumble like stale bread—he'd be able to return victorious. A Conquering Invader.

'_But you haven't conquered __**anything**__,'_ snarled the clawing voice, and the black feeling curled up in his squeedly-spooch unfurled to twine insidiously about the rest of his insides. _'You haven't even conquered the __**Dib**__…'_

Zim hurled out of his chair, his breath hissing hard and fast through his teeth, pacing-pacing-pacing back and forth, back and forth. His hands were fisted now, rigid at his sides, and he was oblivious of the claws sinking into the soft flesh of his palms. The room was jumping again with the violent tremors bolting through his antennae, and he flattened them automatically, trying to get himself under control, while his brain-meat waged war upon itself, and suddenly tired he fell into his chair and pressed at his eyes.

He had to make a decision.

**:You must be loyal:**

"…Computer," Zim said, in tight tones. "How long before the Armada arrives?"

"Approximately 16 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds."

In a way, that would be quite a while. The Massive was the most advanced battleship the Irken possessed, and was filled to bursting with all the latest guns, death rays, and lasers. However, this also made them quite slow, as compared to the Voot Cruisers or Spittle Runners. On the other hand, this wasn't very long at all.

"Ah, Master, you have a call," said the computer.

"Eh? What?" Zim asked, distracted, and looked up in surprise with wide garnet eyes.

"You have a call. From the Massive."

.xXx.

It wasn't that she didn't care. It was just she had her own problems to deal with, her own baggage to lug around—she shouldn't have to carry around everyone else's baggage, too. Unfortunately for Gaz, Dib had not thought to consider this. At present, he was yammering away about something or other—Zim, his latest case, Zim, his girlfriend dumping him, and Zim. The usual, then. She wasn't really listening.

But she figured he probably didn't have anyone else to talk to. So, every now and again, she brought him out, made him buy her lunch, gritted her teeth and let him vent. She never told him why, of course, and found a certain pleasure in knowing it most likely irked him to no end not knowing. That, and she knew he would just call her anyway to piss and moan; this way, at least she got free pizza out of it.

They were sitting outside Bloaty's now, slowly devouring a large pepperoni between them, and sucking down their sodas. It was a nice day; no clouds, sunny, fairly cool. She hated days like this, really. It was too warm for her taste, and she burned easily.

"So, how have you been?" Dib asked once he'd run out of things to bitch about, breaking her reverie. "How's the gaming business?"

She glanced side-long at him. He seemed calmer now that he'd gotten whatever it was he wanted to get off his chest; he'd even dropped that increasingly present caustic tone he'd developed over the years, and was looking back at her in a mild attempt to be civil. "S'okay," she said, shrugging.

Gaz was a video game designer, particularly those of a horrifying nature. The fact was, her games were rated the most disturbing ever made (they had sent some people to the crazy house), and while that was rather gratifying in itself, a lot of people were too scared to buy them, so sales weren't too hot.

Dib waited, wondering idly if she was going to say anything else, but when she didn't he nodded and grabbed another slice of pizza.

"Nice day," he said.

"Just…eat your pizza," Gaz scowled. Dib grinned, and did as he was told.

.xXx.

"GIR!" Zim barked distractedly as he clambered out of the toilet, already scanning the area for his screw-loose minion. "Gir, get in here!"

Gir squealed and tumbled off the couch where he'd been engrossed in the Scary Monkey marathon for the last three or so hours, pitter-pattered into the kitchen where an impatient Zim was waiting for him, and stood rigidly at attention.

"Yes, Master!" He said, eyes blinking red for a moment as he saluted.

"Okay, Gir," Zim replied, linking his hands behind his back and pacing slowly back and forth in front of the robot, watching him out of the corner of his eye to make sure he was listening. "Pay attention. The Tallest have called and they've requested my presence on the Massive." He said this with no small amount of happiness. "So while I'm gone I want you to stay here and guard the—Get off my head, Gir!"

"Awww…" GIR whined, and slid to the floor where he at least had the decency to look guilty under Zim's scathing glare. "But I like your head…"

"Now isn't the time. Listen, don't let _anyone_ in here, Gir," he ordered firmly, in a tone that indicated he would not permit any mistakes. "_Especially_ that Dib-stink, he'll ruin everything."

"Big Head Boy luuuves you," Gir giggled, making Zim gag.

"Don't be disgusting," he spat. "Look, I've already hacked into the humans' _pitiful_ defense systems, rendering them _helpless_ in the face of their impending _doom _when the Massive arrives. I want _you_ to make sure nobody gets in here and tampers with the codes, otherwise all those stupid missiles are gonna come back online and—_GET OFF MY HEAD_!"

Gir squeaked wildly and flung himself back to the floor where he landed with a crash that littered the tiles with little bits of debris and skid-spun into a kitchen chair.

"I have a TWINKIE!" he shrieked, pulling it out of his head to show his Master, before he erupted into an uncontrollable giggle-fit and ate it with as much mess as possible.

"Yes. So you do," Zim sighed, and scrubbed an exasperated hand across his face, trying his very best not to throw something. "Okay, Gir, let's…let's play a game."

"Game?" Gir cried, leaping to his feet at once and bouncing in place, practically shaking now with pent-up energy. "I love games! Oo, Oo, pickmepickmepickmeeee!"

"All right," Zim said, nodding. He'd learned some years ago that Gir seemed to listen better if Zim made whatever it was he wanted done sound fun. "This game is called stay-here-and-don't-let-anyone-in. You lose points if anyone steps through that door, and if no one does by the time I get back then…uh, then you win."

"WhatdoIwin? WhatdoIwin? WhatdoIwin?" Gir shrilled, running circles around Zim and generally acting like a maniac.

"Eh…Tacos?" Zim tried, hoping that was acceptable and would be enough incentive for his robot to actually obey him for once. It was, as Gir's cerulean eyes lit up and he let out a ringing high-pitched squeal before running full-speed into a wall.

"Okie-dokey, Master! Imma gonna go staple the door shut now!"

Zim nodded, satisfied, and marched out of the room.

.xXx.

Dib noticed his computer was blinking the second he walked through the door after his outing with Gaz. Grabbing a soda from the fridge, he walked over and flopped down into his chair, flipping open his laptop with a quick flick of the wrist. He had an expansive monitoring system in Zim's base, so he could keep an eye on the alien, and the only reason his computer would be blinking was if Zim took the Voot Cruiser out for a ride.

Deftly, he scanned through that morning's footage, past Gir throwing bacon at the ceiling, past Zim yelling at him later, past the alien's morning routine, and it looked like he was going to school so Dib went to push fast-forward when suddenly the proximity alerts went off.

Abruptly, Dib was on the edge of his seat, watching the scene play out and becoming increasingly agitated the more he saw. And then it seemed that the world was slowing down, or maybe it was just in his head, because it took him a moment to realize what it all meant.

"Oh, shit."

But he got it in the end.

"Shit, shit."

**_To be continued…_**

* * *

**Disclaimer:  
**

**Zim: Say it, meat sack.**

**Me: But I dun wanna!**

**Zim: You say it or I'm gonna take all your insides out through your dis**_**gus**_**ting nostrils.**

**Me: …Fiiine. I Don't own Invader Zim…Happy?**

**Zim: Yes. Yes I am.**

**End**

**I LIVE! Yes! And I bring with me a new chapter! I'm hoping this story will get exciting one day, but for now here's some hopefully funny Zim/Gir, and some Dib/Gaz interaction, and more foreboding impending doom. Also if you'll notice, I decapitalized (I made up that word ) Gir's name. It looked like it was always being shouted (Though, it usually is) so I went through and changed it. **

**But yeah, the reason I haven't worked on this is because of The Roommates From Hell. These two girls had been living with me for about a month, drinking every night, throwing parties, bringing in strange people all the time, waking me up at all hours of the night when I had work, having sex (and not the good kind), trashing my apartment, and then having the nerve to tell ME to clean it up.**

**Long story short, I snapped. At about three thirty in the morning, after I'd accidentally locked them out because who wouldn't lock the deadbolt at night in the racy neighborhood I live in? Anyway, one of those bitches pushed me down after I yelled at them for waking me up (I had to be up at eight that morning), so I locked her out of my room and called the cops on her skank ass. Now, I'm either going to see her behind bars, or milk her for every penny she earns shaking her flabby butt on the corner of sixth street. Or better yet, both. Needless to say, I won't put up with that sort of reprehensible behavior. I wasn't even hurt, but I'm evil like that, and I hate her. Zim would do the same thing, I tell you! Or just obliterate her head, and her family, and her friends, and her intestines, and her clothes, and her toothbrush, and her ovaries…Personally, I like the latter. One way or another, that gutter-slut is going down. **

**Now I'm sitting in my friend's living room and waiting for them to get their shit out of my house, writing this because I need to vent. So, enough of this unpleasantness. I shall end this on a good note. **

**I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico!**

…**No, not really. I don't even have a car. **

**Well, until the next chapter comes out XP**

**Raha**


	9. In Which Dib Mostly Panics

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Nine: In Which Dib Mostly Panics**

* * *

Dib ran screaming through his apartment. The entire Irken Armada was arriving in little more than ten hours, with the intent to possibly enslave and/or destroy the entire human race, and he had no idea how to stop it. Understandably, it was cause to freak out a little bit.

He'd spent the last few hours calling first the Swollen Eyeballs and trying to convince them of the impending invasion. When they'd hung up on him for the fifth time in a row (they never really put much stock in him after the whole waffle episode), he'd gone on to call the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Mayor, the police, the fire department, the neighborhood watch, and NASA. Of course, no one believed him, but he felt better just knowing he'd tried to warn people. Then he tossed the books out of his backpack and set about throwing random things into it. His clothes, his toothbrush, extra underwear and socks, some twinkies, a soda, and his cat. Sammy was not particularly happy about being woken from his nap, and he was even less happy about being stuffed into a backpack. He made this very clear by protesting loudly and trying to kick his way out. Dib ignored him, grabbed his cellphone, and bolted out the door.

He was already speed-dialing for Gaz before he'd reached the roof, where he'd hidden Tak's old Spittle Runner with the clever use of a bed sheet and some clothespins. Of course, he got her answering machine.

"Pick up, Gaz, I know you're there!" he shouted, eyes convulsively darting up towards a clear blue sky (for now) as he ripped the sheet off his ship, paying no attention to the little old lady out doing her laundry. "I really hope you're home. If you get this, just...just stay inside, okay? I'm coming to get you."

He snapped the cell closed and jumped into the cockpit of the Spittle Runner, sparing a glance at his next-door-neighbor, who stood staring at him in wide-eyed shock. He liked her. She gave him stale cookies sometimes, and she listened to him rant about aliens without calling him crazy. She obviously thought it, but she was nice enough not to say it out loud.

"You better get inside, Mrs. Norrison," he said, with a tight but kindly smile. "There's going to be an invasion soon."

"Is that so, dear?" Mrs. Norrison asked dazedly, her eyes slowly roving over the ship, and then up towards the sky, before she looked at Dib as if she'd never really seen him before. "...Will it be very bad?"

"I think they might end the world, yeah," he answered honestly.

"Oh..." she said faintly, and nodded once. "Should I lock the doors, then?"

"If you want," he shrugged.

"...Will it help?"

"No."

With that, Dib gunned the motor before the flexiplastic even had time to seal all the way shut. He pointed himself towards Gaz's apartment and shot across town like a very large bullet, hoping he could think of something to do soon, and that it wouldn't be too late when he did.

.xXx.

At about the same time Dib was hurtling through the city and breaking pretty much every speed limit on the planet, Zim was hurtling through space and going just as fast. In fact, he was going so fast that he nearly smacked straight into the Massive's hull right as he was coming around Uranus, and it was only with a great deal of screaming and some frantic flying that he was able to avoid breaking his ship into little bitty pieces.

Cursing loudly, he pulled into the docking bay, leapt out of the cockpit and stalked towards the main deck...where he came to an abrupt halt after about three steps. Several Irkens milled around him, maintaining the ships in the bay or loading cargo, and every single one of them had stopped what they were doing to stare in stunned silence in his direction. Zim stared right back at them, equally surprised, because even the tallest one there just barely came up to his waist.

And suddenly, the actuality of what he'd done by stopping the caffeine settled into his mind and it hit him that _he was tall._ Living on earth for so long, surrounded by creatures that were more or less his height, he'd never given it much thought. Really, he was only about 5'3", certainly nothing to brag about back on that spinning ball of muck. But _here_, where he was surrounded by people no bigger than human children, he towered over them like...like Ms. Bitters had, back when he was small. It was definitely not something he was used to, by any means.

"M-my Taller," said a voice somewhere around his knees, and he looked down at the tiny Irken staring up at him with a mixture of anxiety, awe, and something Zim didn't recognize at first, because he'd never received it. Respect. With a jolt, he realized he had the respect of every Irken in the room, probably everyone on the ship aside from the Tallest. Ten years ago, he might have danced for joy. For once in his life, he was truly getting the respect he deserved—only he knew it wasn't deserved. It was because he'd been looking where he wasn't supposed to be looking and found a little compartment full of caffeine; instead of feeling gratified, he just felt oddly empty, and his squeedly-spooch churned with a strange, sick sense of vertigo.

Zim shook his head. What was wrong with him?

"I am here to speak with the Tallest," Zim said with authority, and drew himself up to his full height.

"Yes, sir," the smaller said smartly. "Right this way, sir."

Zim followed the little Irken through a door and into the bowels of the ship, noticing that every pair eyes would track him as he passed, heads turning to get a look at the tall new-comer. Perhaps it was from the years of trying to blend in, to not be noticed or stand out in any way among the humans, that made Zim's antennae twitch anxiously at all the attention. He felt uncomfortably exposed, vulnerable, out of place. It didn't seem to matter that they were his own people, and laughably tinier than he was, to boot. For some reason they felt more threatening to him than Dib ever had, and frag him if he couldn't figure out why.

.xXx.

Dib had been steadily pounding on his sister's door for the better part of ten minutes before she finally opened it. To be exact, she actually wrenched it open, her gray eyes sparking fury and it looked like she was about to snarl something just plain mean at him when he shoved his way past her and slammed the door shut.

"Listen-I'm-sorry-I-interrupted-your-video-game-or-whatever-it-is-you-were-doing-all-alone-in-the-dark-here-but-the-world's-about-to-be-destroyed-and-I-need-your-help!" he babbled shrilly, and waved his hands to emphasis just how bad of a crisis they were dealing with. Gaz stared at him for a moment before she exhaled slowly and pinched the bridge of her nose, by now used to dealing with her brother's questionable sanity.

"What?" she asked, her voice flat and deadpan, a tone she often used when she was trying very hard not to hit him over the head. Preferably with something heavy.

"Okay, I know I've said this, like, a million times before," Dib replied hurriedly, and held up his palms in a calming gesture. "But there's a very real possibility that it could actually happen this time. Aliens are coming to blow up the planet this evening, and I think it'd be a good idea if we came up with a way to stop them—"

"God," Gaz snorted. "Is this about your boyfriend again? Did you two have another fight, or something?"

"What? I..._no_. That's...wait—no. _What_?" Dib garbled, his voice jumping an entire octave higher and going all squeaky with horror. He looked like some kind of boiled bug, his eyes were popping out so much, and his face was blushing a lovely shade of red.

"Oh for the love of—" Gaz cried, throwing her hands up. "_Zim, _numbnuts. Every time you two get into it, you come whining to me about how he's abducting cows or harvesting people's brains...Would you just screw him already, and get it over with? Cause I swear to god, I'm am getting pretty sick of dealing with these paranoid delusional fantasies of yours."

"Is _that_ what you think this is?" Dib demanded in outrage, once he was able to get his jaw up off the floor and stop staring at her in flabbergasted silence. "_Sexual tension_?"

"Well, what else could it be?" Gaz snorted, rolling her eyes as she turned away to root around in the fridge for any left over pizza, a sign that she was done with the conversation. Dib followed her doggedly. He'd be damned it he let her get away with saying something like that and get away with it.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that _he's an alien_!" he screeched, gesticulating wildly. "That, and the Irken Armada is on their way here, _right now_, to utterly destroy all life as we know it. That doesn't bother you, even a little?"

"Nope," Gaz shrugged, chewing her cold pizza as indifferently and callously as possible, to indicate her complete lack of concern for the whole situation.

"Well, that's a shame," Dib sniped caustically, and crossed his arms in self-righteous indignation. "I just thought you might want to do something, seeing as how an invasion might possibly cut into your video-gaming, since the world will be taken over and all. But, you know, whatever."

Gaz paused to consider that for a moment. An invasion _would_ be annoying, she thought. On the other hand, she was this close to beating Ganon in _Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess_, and he was proving to be even more annoying than her brother, Zim, and the entire stupid Irken race combined. Honestly, how many times would she have to kill him before he finally kicked off?

"Yeah, it'll be a real shame," she said dryly, and started pushing her brother towards the door. "But I'd rather play video games, if it's all the same to you. The next time you feel like complaining, wait until Pizza Day. Until then, I'd rather you didn't try to drag me into playing with your boyfriend..."

"He is _not_ my _boyfriend_!" Dib bellowed. "And I've decided I'm not leaving this up to discussion. Come on!"

With that, Dib seized a hold of Gaz's arm and pulled her down the hall towards the stairs.

"Hey, let go!" Gaz snapped, digging her heels in, but Dib was bigger and stronger than she was. She wasn't a skinny girl by any means, but she wasn't heavy either, so Dib had no trouble at all in hauling her up onto the roof. "Dib, I swear, you better let go of me right this _second_, or you're not gonna have that arm for much longer."

Ignoring her threats (and the awful chill that was creeping up his spine) Dib dumped his growling sister into the Spittle Runner, climbed in beside her, and closed the cockpit.

"Now, look," he said in what he hoped to be a placating manner, and turned towards her just in time to get punched in the nose. "Augh! Christ on a bike, what was _that_ for?"

"Oh, I don't know. How about for kidnapping me?" Gaz hissed venomously, her fangs dripping with a great deal of sarcasm. "Now let me out of here, you idiot. I don't feel like playing this stupid game right now, okay?"

"The end of the world is not a game, Gaz," Dib said seriously, though his tone suggested he was also being rather derisive.

"Please," Gaz scoffed. "You call me pretty much every week, screaming that Zim's gonna annihilate the planet. How is this time any different?"

"Because it's not just Zim," Dib insisted urgently. "It's the _Armada_, and _they're_ not incompetent! They've enslaved or obliterated half the galaxy, Gaz! Now they're coming here. Do you really think Earth is capable of defending itself?"

"I think a couple of well-placed warheads might inspire them to go elsewhere..." Gaz said with a careless wave of her hand.

"Won't work, I already checked with NASA," Dib said, shaking his head. "All space-based weapons are down because apparently 'they aren't really working good right now', and I'd be surprised if Zim didn't have anything to do with it."

"How did you get NASA's number?" Gaz wanted to know. "I thought they changed it after what happened last year..."

"That's not important right now," Dib said importantly, in an attempt to brush the comment off as quickly as possible. He really didn't need a reminder of that particular fiasco at the moment. "Right now we need to figure out what we're going to do."

Gaz sighed heavily, gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, and looked down her nose at her brother. "So? What _are_ we going to do?"

"I don't know," Dib admitted, causing Gaz to start grinding her teeth. "But I have an idea."

.xXx.

It was in the way they moved, Zim decided. Countless little Irkens were marching through the corridors of the Massive, coming and going in both directions, an endless stream of them. Like ants, they maneuvered around him as if they'd been set upon a path, and not a one put so much as a toe out of line. But it wasn't their quick, jerky movements that freaked him out so much. It was the fact that every single Irken was marching at exactly the same time, at the same speed, and at the same tempo. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. One, two, three. One, two, three. Even as he watched, he sensed there was something in the atmosphere, an oppressive urge that pushed down on his brain and tried to lull him into conformity. He flattened his antennae uneasily and kept his pace. It didn't help that they all looked the same, almost completely indistinguishable from any other Irken. Having been on Earth for so long, surrounded by things that never matched (and usually prided themselves on being as different as possible from everything else), Zim found that coming back into such a monochromatic environment wasn't as relieving as he'd thought it would be. It was downright stressful...because he knew he was no longer a part of that world.

When he was smaller, he hadn't noticed. Perhaps because that was all he'd ever known, or...what was that stupid human saying? You couldn't burn down the forest because the trees were full of toxic gas? Something like that. He'd never really paid attention in biology. Maybe it was because he'd been gone so long, maybe it was the extra height, maybe it was the fact that the caffeine wasn't fogging his brain anymore, but for the first time he could see. And what he saw was...very, very creepy.

_No_, he told himself, shaking his head. _It's just—what do they call it? Culture shock. I haven't been around this many Irkens in a long time. I'll get used to it again. Besides, I'm taller now. I'll get some cushy job somewhere and never have to return to that putrid, festering, stink-hole of an excuse for a planet ever again._

_...But what about Dib? _Asked a small voice, huddling in the back of his mind. _What about him?_ He thought savagely, pushed that voice into a dark corner, and told it to shut up.

Finally, after what must have been at least ten minutes of walking, they came upon a large steel door, stamped with the usual black Irken insignia. It opened with a hiss and folded away into the walls, and Zim strode purposefully into the main chamber of the Massive, the only sign of his growing anxiety being the subtle twitch of his antennae every now and again. He marched up to the Tallests platform, stood at attention, and addressed the Tallest importantly.

"My Tallest, I have succeeded in rendering the humans HELPLESS in the face of your impending and inevitable deliverance of _doom_ upon their pitiful planet and—Hey." Zim paused, and looked around in mild confusion. "Where _are_ the Tallest?"

"They had other matters they had to attend to, and unfortunately, could not come to meet you in person."

Zim sagged a little with disappointment, but he recovered quickly, and looked around for whoever had spoken. That's when an Irken stepped from the crowd and onto the platform, where he stood gazing passively down at Zim, acting like he owned the place. His hands were folded neatly behind his back, and his feet were set apart in a relaxed but militant stance. His antennae were laid back in disinterest, or dislike, and while he was a few inches shorter than Zim his eyes were cold, direct, and held no amount of deference at all.

"Who are you?" Zim asked before he dismissed the Irken entirely. "Where are my Tallest? I was summoned to speak with _them_."

"I told you they are indisposed, and I am currently in command of this vessel," the Irken replied curtly.

"You?" Zim asked, a little derisively, and glanced around at the other Irken in the room. Nobody looked up to meet his gaze. "But you're short," he protested when he didn't get a response.

"Perhaps I ought to have clarified," said the Irken. "The _Control Brains_ have put me in command of this vessel."

"...They _did_?" Zim asked incredulously.

"They did," the Irken asserted firmly. "Let me introduce myself; I am Irken Mar. And I have a proposition for you."

**_To be continued..._**

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim.**

**Oh. My. God. It's been two years since I updated this thing. I haven't even thought about Invader Zim in months, and then I went back through all the reviews, and browsed through deviantart, and re-watched the episodes, and I remembered why I like that show so much. I'd even forgotten the storyline I was going with...almost. I don't even have the guide I wrote out, since I got mad at my old computer and punched the screen hard enough to crack it...**

**Anywhoo. My muse came back and I recalled how cool and fun to write this story was, so I thought I'd grace you all with another chapter. Let's see, things that have happened since last chappie...I evicted the skank-hoe, got a new cushy desk job, moved into an apartment on the swank side of town for a while, got a cat named Tobermory, and then moved again into an even better apartment where all my friends live. On the whole, life is good. **

**I'll try and write some more tomorrow, and we'll see how long my muse sticks around this time. **

**Raha**


	10. Inferno

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Ten: Inferno**

* * *

"...What sort of proposition?" Zim asked slowly. His antennae stood at full attention, rigid and alert, his eyes narrowed with suspicion at the strange, commanding smaller. Mar simply gazed back impassively for a moment, before he gave a pleasant smile that didn't quite make it to his cold red eyes.

"I need something from you, Zim," Mar explained, sounding earnest and sincere. He certainly didn't _look_ threatening. In fact, he didn't look any different from any other Irken. A little tall, maybe, but otherwise completely average. He was dressed as any civilian scientist, his garb similar to the Invaders, though the coloring was a little different. His hands were stuffed innocuously into the pockets of his starch white lab coat, his name clearly stamped across his chest, and a pair of goggles hung around his neck. But there was something about him, something about his behavior that set him apart from the others. Maybe it was his eyes, or that detached way he was smiling, but there was something about him, something unnerving that made Zim's insides squirm and recoil and writhe like worms.

"I need your help," Mar continued smoothly, and took a step forwards, his gaze never wavering. Zim swallowed reflexively, watching him warily, and held his ground. "And if you help me, I can make sure the Tallest give you anything you want."

"Why would the Control Brains leave you in charge?" Zim asked suddenly, clearly not listening. "If the Tallest can't be here...there are Irken here that are taller than you. What's an inferior worm like you doing in command?"

Mar stopped his casual advance and considered Zim for a moment. "By taller...do you mean you?" he questioned with a curious tilt of his head, a faint trace of veiled amusement lacing his soft tenor voice.

"Err...well, no, I actually meant Bob over there," Zim replied, motioning carelessly towards one of the navigators, who had at least a centimeter on Mar.

"But my name's Quark," the navigator said weakly.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Zim waved him off dismissively. "The point is you're too short. So what the frag is going on around here? Where are my Tallest?"

Mar regarded him quietly, his scrutinizing gaze sizing the other up before he gave a small nod, as if he had come to some kind of conclusion. "I'm a little surprised, Zim. You aren't as stupid as some have led me to believe."

Zim flashed him a sharp zipper-grin. "Bet you've been led to believe a lot of things," he said nastily, his grin widening when Mar's antennae flattened, and he took a menacing step forward. "Now get your brain-meats in order and tell me: where...are...my Tallest?"

"Now, now, there's no need to get so upset," Mar chuckled, and held his palms up in a placating gesture. "Your precious leaders are fine and well, I assure you."

"I think you're lying," Zim hissed, advancing another step. "So I suggest you start explaining to me what is going on before I pull your _guts_ out through your _eye sockets_."

"Don't you even want to know what it is I'm offering before you start making threats?" Mar asked him mildly. He wasn't intimidated, and appeared unconcerned about the possibility of being attacked. Zim paused, studying the way the other's antennae perked up and the placement of his feet...Mar seemed relaxed, but his stance said otherwise, and Zim had had enough experience in combat to know when an opponent knew what they were doing.

"I don't think a little insect like you has anything real to offer," he retorted, his teeth snapping with mounting ferocity. His antennae jumped and twitched, augmenting his senses so that the room was suddenly sharply in focus. Colors brightened, smells intensified, and he could pick out every little whir and click and sound. On silent command, his Pak shot a charge of adrenaline into his system, and he tensed like a spring. However, the extra rush of energy had it various side-effects, as his mind jumped and tittered and steadily lapsed into old speech-patterns. The neurons in his brain began to fire faster, and the old well of energy started bubbling to the surface. "Now Zim is losing patience with your _filthy_ lies. Where are my Tallest? Tell me!"

"I really don't think it's wise to pass up an opportunity without even hearing what it is first," Mar chided gently. "Besides, I told you, the Tallest are unharmed."

"LIES—!"

"I'm offering you something you've been wanting a long time now, more than anything in the world, I'd wager," Mar continued, as if he hadn't even heard the outburst.

"_Zim said he won't_—!"

"Even if it's the _destruction _of said world?" Mar asked archly, and if he'd had eyebrows he would have delicately cocked one at Earth's Invader. Zim froze, his hands outstretched as if to grab Mar by the throat, but they fell limply by his sides and he stood stock still, staring wide-eyed in surprise. His body quivered, and he glanced out through the shield of the Massive's observation deck to gaze tensely in the direction of Earth. Slowly, like newspaper in an inferno, all thoughts of the Tallest and of Irken Mar burned to ash in the face of a single, blazing thought: _Dib_. Suddenly, he realized what Mar was saying, that he was being given a chance to finally deliver a terrible and irrefutable blow to his long-standing nemesis, one that was worthy of their fight, _worthy of Dib_. The destruction of the boy's planet would be a victory Zim had been waiting for, yearning for...

...and would never forget, for as long as he lived.

He was quiet for nearly a full minute, breathing slowly, before he turned and, with eyes thin and mean and full of manic exhilaration, looked at Mar.

"I accept."

.xXx.

On Earth, people ran screaming through the streets. The road was clogged with countless fender-benders and cars fighting to leave the cities, as if that would do them any good. On the telly, reporters from every news channel were shouting frantically into their microphones as behind them people were pointing and staring up in awe. The camera swung towards the sky, where thousands upon thousands of Irken battle cruisers hung immobile and utterly silent, each one stationed exactly every one hundred miles in every direction.

All over the world.

Dib had never seen a Viral Tank before, and while they weren't as big as the Massive, they were certainly enormous (and numerous) enough so that just one, let alone thousands, could easily send the planet into an immediate and full-blown terror.

_Don't panic,_ Dib told himself, and tried to breathe slowly. Inhale through his nose, exhale through his mouth, rinse, lather, and repeat. Gaz didn't seem to be having any trouble, and glared impassively up at the deadly war-ships drifting past them as if they were nothing more than harmless, fluffy clouds. Clouds with death-rays, but clouds nonetheless.

"You really think this plan of yours is going to work?" she asked mildly, her tone clearly skeptical, but she didn't appear concerned.

"I'm beginning to have my doubts," Dib replied faintly. "I didn't expect there to be so _many_...I'm sure I heard Zim's computer say there were only three."

"Obviously, they decided to call in reinforcements," Gaz said flatly. "So, any bright ideas, oh fearless leader?"

"We stick to the plan," Dib said stoically. "If we can take out the Massive, the other ships might, I don't know...give up?"

"...This plan is stupid," Gaz told him, and leveled a hooded gray glare in his direction.

"Well, it's all we've got right now," Dib sighed. He looked over Gaz's head to where the Massive pretty much sat right next to them (where they were currently parked on the moon), hanging silent and baneful and mind-bogglingly big. It looked very indestructible. Honestly, something that hugely, vastly, ginormously _colossal_ shouldn't be allowed to exist. Seriously, it was the size of, like, twenty humpback whales combined together.

"You ready?" he asked, reflexively seizing a hold of the controls.

"Whatever," said Gaz with a small toss of her head. Dib glanced surreptitiously down at her hands, where they were clenched so tightly around her GameSlave2 that her knuckles were turning white.

"Okay," he said, revving the engine and launching straight up—

"GREETINGS, LOWLY PEOPLE OF EARTH."

The Spittle Runner lurched and nearly ran into the moon when Dib jerked back on the stick, yelping in surprise as a cold, disinterested, unknown voice boomed out through the Spittle Runner's radio speakers.

Dib squawked, fighting to get the ship under control, when the transmission monitor crackled to life, and he jumped when he recognized the all too familiar face. Zim grinned viciously back at him, his zipper-teeth bared in feral glee and his sharp slitted eyes glinting with giddy malice.

"Hello, Dib-stink," Zim intoned dangerously, his low voice charged with manic triumph, feverish red eyes brightly burning. His taunting smile quirked up and he arched a cocky brow. "Does the little worm-baby wanna come out and play?"

"Gladly," Dib snarled, matching Zim's grin with a savage one of his own, amber eyes sparking with wild fury and blood-lust abandon. He sensed a fight, and his blood was suddenly singing through his veins, setting his heart on fire. "Bring it on, alien _freak_."

"Excellent," the Irken hissed. "Zim will be waiting for you."

And the transmission abruptly cut out.

.xXx.

"GREETINGS, LOWLY PEOPLE OF EARTH." boomed a voice from every speaker from every battle ship from every point all across the planet. The people currently running and screaming and panicking in general came to a surprised stop and looked around abject terror. There was a minute or two of silence, utter and complete silence, as the world cowered and collectively held its breath. And then...

"THIS IS THE IRKEN ARMADA," said the voice, in a clipped and professional way, but it was very clear that it was bored and deemed addressing the denizens of Earth to be beneath it. "ONE CYCLE AGO, OR APPROXIMATELY TEN OF YOUR EARTH YEARS, WE SENT AN AGENT TO YOUR WORLD TO DETERMINE IF YOUR RACE WAS SUITABLE FOR CONQUEST EITHER BY ASSIMILATION, ENSLAVEMENT, OR DESTRUCTION. UNFORTUNATELY, WE HAVE DEEMED YOUR PEOPLE TO BE UNFIT FOR ANYTHING BUT IMMEDIATE TERMINATION. PLEASE STAND BY FOR YOUR IMMINENT DEMISE. THANK YOU, AND HAVE A PLEASANT DAY."

There was a click as the speakers shut off, and the voice cut out, to be instantly bombarded with a world-wide cacophony of noise as every person on the planet screamed objection.

"NOW THERE'S NO NEED TO GET SO UPSET!" the voice snapped irritably as the speakers were harshly switched back on. "ACCORDING TO OUR AGENT, YOU ARE A VIOLENT, UNINTELLIGENT SPECIES THAT PREFERS TO WALLOW IN ITS OWN FILTH AND MAKE WAR RATHER THAN ATTEMPT TO BETTER YOURSELVES OR THE UNIVERSE IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM. YOU HAVE POLLUTED YOUR PLANET BEYOND ALL USE AND RECOGNITION, TO THE POINT THAT WE WILL BE FORCED TO OBLITERATE IT ALONG WITH YOUR PATHETIC EXISTENCE. GIVEN THE EVIDENCE AGAINST YOU, I STRONGLY BELIEVE WE ARE DOING YOU A FAVOR."

The Earth resounded with the concerted shrieking of every human being alive, and the voice gave a tiresome sigh. But apparently, some scientist somewhere was able to get a message back to the invading force, obviously pleading for mercy, to which the agitated voice replied with:

"NO, I'M AFRAID WE WILL NOT RECONSIDER. FOR IRK'S SAKE, YOU HAVEN'T EVEN DISCOVERED INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL YET! OTHERWISE YOU WOULD HAVE HEARD OF US SOONER AND GOTTEN YOUR ACT TOGETHER. WE'VE HAD NOTICE POSTED IN THE OMEGA QUADRANT FOR _YEARS_."

There was a brief pause as whoever it was argued plaintively.

"WELL, YOU SHOULD HAVE TRIED HARDER," said the voice primly. "REALLY, I'VE NO SYMPATHY AT ALL—"

It was about that time that the speaker was suddenly interrupted by a spectacular explosion, so big and so bright it could be seen all the way out in space. There was a lot of screaming and shrieking on the other end of the line, before the transmission abruptly cut off. About half of civilization sent up a combined cheer of gratitude, while the other less stupid half remained crouched under their tables and waited to see what would happen next.

.xXx.

"Really, I've no sympathy at all—" Mar was saying unsympathetically when suddenly the Massive pitched wildly into several nearby vessels. The dull thud of distant explosions shuddered throughout the ship, and it groaned as flexiplastic cracked and ceramic girders twisted until they snapped. Mar grabbed the console as the entire ship listed onto its side, screeching Irkens scrabbling for purchase as they tumbled past him. Calmly, he switched off the transmission and glanced around in confused vexation.

"What on Irk is going on?" he demanded, sounding extremely put out. Zim had seized a hold of a nearby Irken, who was clinging desperately to one of the chairs, and hauled himself up the unfortunate insectoid's body. Growling irritably, he kicked the Irken away and climbed into the chair, positioning himself so that he was crouched atop of what would have normally been the backrest had the Massive been upright.

"Dib," he answered simply, his voice light and airy. But he was practically thrumming with excitement, his garnet eyes glowing eagerly and his antennae quivering in anxious anticipation. "I believe he's here, now."

"T-Taller Mar!" shouted one of the Irken.

"What happened?" Mar called.

"Something hit us, sir!" the Irken cried.

"Well, that's pretty fragging obvious, isn't it?" Zim retorted derisively. "Can any of you useless navigation-drones tell us what on Irk it _was_?"

"I...I don't..." the panicking Irken started, but the sentence died in his throat when what looked like an enormous goat's horn floated past the observation deck, pieces of debris crumbling off and spinning away as it bumped gently into the flexiplastic window with a jarring force that sent a spider-web of cracks racing across the surface. Zim activated his Pak's atmospheric regulation system in case it shattered completely, flinching slightly at the tingle that jolted through his antennae as the invisible space-helmet settled over his head. He squinted for a moment at the bizarre object floating before him, before his eyes suddenly lit up with recognition and a happy grin spread across his features.

"Oh, Dib-worm, very clever," he sneered to himself. The 'goat horn' was actually a large chunk of his Transport Station, which originally had been designed in the shape of a crescent moon. Dib had obviously been able to commandeer the entire spacial outpost and had crashed it directly into the Massive. Since the craft was Irken in design, it hadn't shown up on any of the monitors as a threat, and of course no one had expected it to run right into them. Zim was rather impressed, though he was loathed to admit it.

As an adversary, Dib never let him down.

.xXx.

"Brace yourself!" Dib screamed, gripping the controls of the Spittle Runner for dear life as the Massive loomed impossibly larger and larger in the window of the observation deck of Zim's space station. And then there was a resounding, horrible, deafening _noise_ that punched in through his ears and six feet into his skull as the station slammed into the side of the Irken war ship with enough force to throw the Runner back with a wave of sheer pressure. The floor of Zim's orbital base buckled and crunched, and Dib threw the Runner into full throttle, frantically dodging flying debris as he gunned for the gaping hole in the Massive's side, straight towards an explosive inferno as the two vessels collapsed into one another. It was like watching two very big monster trucks—like, the-size-of-a-couple-of-moons big—crash into each other headlong...only he was watching from the inside, and trying very hard not to die.

The sound in itself was mind-blowing, and almost did blow out his ear-drums. Screaming metal, twisting ceramic, shattering glass. And then the roar of fire as they flew directly into the conflagration, their little ship shuddering as it was knocked about by several nearby explosions. Dib's breath came in short, gasping bursts, and his heart thudded wildly in his chest and attempted to crawl out through his windpipe when all he could see were flames—

And then all at once they were clear and this close to hitting a wall.

"Look out!" Gaz shouted, reached over, and wrenched the control stick as hard as she could. The Spittle Runner spun crazily, just barely avoiding smashing itself to pieces, before Dib was able to correct it—and then they were hurtling down a corridor past injured or dead Irken, bashing through doors and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

After what had seemed like an eternity of traversing hallways and back-tracking and on occasion demanding directions from a very surprised alien, but was really only about ten minutes, Dib finally came to an imposing, impassable steel door that must have stood at least thirty feet tall and fifteen wide. It was shut tight.

_No problem_, he thought savagely, and without even slowing down he activated the modified gun-turrets mounted haphazardly onto the sides of the Spittle Runner and blasted a smoldering hole right in the middle of the whole thing. They shot through the smoke and hit the floor in a shower of sparks, skidding for fifteen feet—metal screeching on metal—before they hit a wall hard and came to a jarring and abrupt stop.

Dib sat there for a moment, panting heavily and willing his heart back under control...and then he reached up and gently patted the dash. After he'd managed to erase all personality programs from the little ship, it had proven to be extremely useful, having lived through countless space battles with Zim, several trips to neighboring planets, as well as carting him to and from classes every weekend back in the Academy. He loved the old thing to pieces, and silently thanked the stars it had survived this, as well.

"So...any thoughts on how to handle them?" Gaz asked. Dib blinked and looked around at the fifty or so Irkens slowly advancing on their ship.

"Yeah," he said, and punched a button. The cockpit slid open with a soft hiss, and he jumped out—wobbling slightly since his legs had become the consistency of wet noodles—but he shook it off and strode purposefully forward. Flashing his detective's badge, he pulled a Plasmar Neuron Blaster 9000 out from under the seat, and announced in an authoritative voice, "This is the police! You are hereby all under arrest for acts of terrorism and attempting to destroy the Earth! Put your mother-fuckin' hands behind your mother-fuckin' heads, bend over and kiss your freaky alien butts goodbye!"

**_To be continued..._**

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, its characters, or affiliated ideas. More or less all rights belong to Mr. V.**

**Well, my muse is still alive and kicking on this story. Hooray! I liked writing this chapter. Lots of action here. The scene where Dib crashed Zim's space station into the Massive was particularly delicious. The part where Mar is speaking to the humans is a scene based off a similar-type conversation the Vogons in _Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy_, when they were explaining to Earth about their intention to destroy it in order to erect an interstellar bypass. So props to Douglas Adams. **

**I'm having a little trouble with Zim, though. I love his insane nature, but it kind of clashes with the more serious theme this story is starting to lean towards. I can explain it away with the loss of caffeine, but I miss his little outbursts. So I think I'm going to make it where he only gets all crazy whenever he's really angry or upset. I hope I made that clear in the story. **

**Can't think of anything else,**

**Raha**


	11. Oh, Beloved Enemy

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Eleven: Oh, Beloved Enemy**

* * *

_Zim stood at the top of the stone steps that were the precursor entrance to that insufferable place of torture the dirt monkeys called Hi Skool. The bell was still ringing shrilly within the bowels of the prison-building, and yammering teen-beasts made their way past him in droves. They were careful to give him a wide berth. Zim glared miserably up at the sky, his hands fisted in the hem of his shirt, and his teeth clenched in frustration. Of course it had to rain today. He'd been in something of a hurry that morning, due mostly in part to Gir setting a pack of **horrible** bush-babies loose in the house (just where, exactly, he had gotten them Zim had no idea) , and he'd been so busy screaming, and chasing them out, and then trying to get to school on time that in the end he'd completely forgotten to coat himself in paste. Well, the sky _had_ been deceptively clear...until about five minutes ago, that was. Damn the weather for tricking him like that! And that stupid weatherman, forecasting sunshine all week, the filthsome liar. Zim made a mental note to replace the maggot's organs with...with...well, Zim couldn't think of anything at the moment—but it definitely wouldn't be more organs. _

_Zim laughed quietly under his breath, imagining all the unspeakable things he was going to do once he'd found this weather-regulator-person, and solicited several strange looks from a few nearby human females. He glared and snapped his teeth. They hurried away from him quickly, whispering to one another and casting uneasy glances back over their shoulders. Zim sneered after them. Honestly, he didn't see why every male-pig in skool was making such a fuss. So their chests had grown some sort of fleshy tumors. So what? He imagined those things—one boy had referred to them as 'hooters', though how they had anything to do with owls was beyond him—probably just got in the way more than anything else. The bigger they were did seem to have some sort of correlation in regards to the number of suitors asking to complete the mating ritual, but if _that_ was all they were good for, then Zim didn't see that hooters had any practical use whatsoever. _

_'What a worthless race,' he thought savagely. The only thing anyone in the whole blasted skool thought about was attracting a mate and looking pretty for the opposite sex. There were enough hormones in the air to make him sick. Ah well, that would just make this planet easier to conquer, in the end..._

_Zim's thoughts were violently disrupted when something big and solid collided with his shoulder and sent him spinning out into the rain. His claws scrabbled for purchase, and he let out a short bark of pain when his head cracked against the corner of a concrete step. He hit the ground and collapsed into a heap, hands clutching at the back of his skull. His Pak whirred softly, already releasing nanobots to tend the injury, and he glared up through a haze of disoriented pain at whatever it was that had dared run into him. _

"_Whoops," said a voice somewhere above him, sounding anything but sincere. "Didn't see you there, shorty."_

_A snarl was forming on his throat, only to dissolve a second later into startled yelps as the sting of rain cut through the daze in his mind. Spitting every filthy Irken and Earthly curse he knew, he scrambled back up the steps and out of the burning downpour. Someone was snickering behind him, and he whirled._

"_WRETCHED STINK-BEAST—" Zim shrieked, and cut off in surprise when he found himself face to face with, not the Dib-worm, but one of the lowly jock-drones. As far as he could tell, this particular __breed of student engaged in physical and sometimes even self-harmful activities for the entertainment of others. They were especially confusing, because while in his mind that behavior put them at the very bottom of the skool's hierarchy, the rest of the humans, for some bizarre reason, seemed to pay the ball-carriers the most respect. The larger chested hooter-girls flocked around them, blinking their disgusting eyeballs, and painting their pale pink faces with what Zim could only assume was some kind of ritualistic war-paint. The only thing Zim could give them credit for was their smell. The hooter-girls seemed to have figured out their race reeked, and copiously sprayed themselves with sweet-smelling liquids. _

_This even seemed to have some effect on the Dib-beast. Zim had caught him staring distractedly at a hooter-girl once or twice, a far-off look in his eyes, filled up with an emotion Zim was unfamiliar with. It was like...wanting, but softer, sadder. That look disgusted him to no end. As Zim's rival, Dib didn't have the right nor the time to be daydreaming about some tumorous mud-pig. He ought to be paying attention to more important things, and whenever he saw such a look, Zim was quick to remind him what those things were. It was just a shame that only females seemed to use the nice-smelly liquid. At least then he wouldn't have to stink so much._

"_Hey, I'm talking to you! What the fuck did you just say, freak?"_

_Something grabbed the front of his shirt and hoisted Zim into the air. Zim looked down in disinterest. Oh right, the jock-drone. _

"_Unhand me, stinking Earth scum!" Zim barked, and slapped the boy sharply across the face, hard enough that he left three deep gashes in his cheek, even with his gloves on. The maggot bellowed and dropped him, staggering back slightly and clawing at his bleeding face._

"_Your hands are unworthy of touching the Almighty Zim," Zim leered as he dusted himself off, flicking at invisible bits of lint. _

"_Oh, it is _so_ on!" the Earth-pig snarled. "I'm gonna rip your freaking head off!" _

_While Zim wondered what it was exactly that was on, the dirt-monkey lunged at him heavily. But he was nothing like Dib-stink. His attacks were too obvious and exaggerated, and Zim side-stepped him with contemptible ease. The boy staggered, and whirled around, roaring curses as he threw himself at the Irken again. This time, Zim seized his wrist, twisting until he felt bones break (the pig-smelly let out a satisfying squeal), and hurled the boy down the stairs. The jock-drone crunched when he hit the steps, rolled for a few feet, and finally lay still, groaning face-down in the mud. Zim smirked, his mood lightened just a little. _

"_Torque isn't going to be very happy with you when he wakes up," said a voice. Zim glanced casually over his shoulder at the Dib-beast, who was leaning nonchalantly against the Hi Skool building. Dib pushed away from the wall and came to stand next to Zim, but not too close. He regarded the jock-drone silently, swinging his umbrella in slow circles, before he let out a quiet sigh and extended it towards Zim._

"_What is this, Dib-stink?" Zim demanded, eyeing the umbrella as if he expected it to explode any minute. _

"_It's an umbrella," Dib replied flatly, and arched a brow at the alien as if to ask if he was really that __retarded. "What does it look like?"_

"_I know what it is!" Zim barked angrily. "Why are you _giving_ it to me?"_

"_Because it's raining?" Dib shrugged, his expression completely innocent. "And it happens that I don't burn up in the rain. Thought you could use it, that's all."_

_Zim snarled the kind of snarl that started in the back of his throat and more often than not ended up in someone else's. Nothing Dib did, at least in regard to Zim, was ever without some sort of hidden motive. Zim knew that better than anyone, and of course Dib knew that he knew. So really, he was just playing dumb to get under the alien's skin. It was working, and Dib cocked a grin at the seething Irken._

"_What's it supposed to do?" Zim said scornfully. "Close on my head and suck out my brain-meats? Call forth bolts of lightning? Summons herds of dogs to chase me home? What? What? Tell me or else, Dib-stink!"_

"_Look, it's just an umbrella, it doesn't do anything!" Dib tried to assure him, waving his hands in protest, but he was laughing, too. "I promise!"_

_Zim regarded him with narrow, suspicious eyes. "It's a bomb, isn't it?"_

"_No, it's not. But it's going to—"_

"_Isn't it?"_

"_Dammit, Zim, I said it wasn't! I thought you might—"_

"_ISN'T IT?"_

_Zim wasn't listening anymore. His zipper-teeth were clenched and his arms were rigid at his sides. The alien trembled with something like ill-contained rage, and his blood red eyes were tightly closed. There was a snap-twitch energy jolting through his antennae, and Zim seemed to be having some kind of minor fit. Dib was used to these little outbursts, though, and never gave them much thought._

_He threw his hands up in the air, exasperated, before he shook the umbrella open and trudged out into the rain. After a few steps he turned on his heel and spread out his free arm in a gesture of 'See? It's not doing anything.'_

_Zim watched him in acute distrust, waiting for the umbrella to do something unpleasantly horrendous to Dib's big, fat head. Unfortunately, the umbrella continued to behave like a normal umbrella should, and didn't maim his nemesis in the slightest. Dib seemed to be waiting for a response._

"_Well...It's not trying to eat you," Zim said, looking rather disappointed. Dib rolled his eyes, stomped back up the steps out of the rain, and held it out to the Invader. _

"_So, now that we've established my umbrella isn't dangerous, are you gonna take it or what?" he sighed._

"_If it's not dangerous, why do you insist that I have it?" Zim growled, stepping back, and looked at the human in that skeptical, crooked one-narrowed-eye kind of way. _

"_Zim," Dib started, his tone suggesting that he was losing patience. "I'm giving it to you because I don't burn in the rain, and it's going to rain all night. I'm not being nice. I just don't want you here by yourself. There's no telling what you might do to the skool, and I want you someplace where I can keep an eye on you and make sure you don't cause any trouble. _That's all_, okay?"_

_He held out the umbrella again. Zim made no move to take it. It wasn't that Dib's explanation didn't sound perfectly reasonable, despite the fact that Zim really didn't have anything on him with which to sabotage the skool (although that _was _an intriguing idea). Zim was just loathe to accept anything from the Dib-beast, and his Irken pride especially rebelled at accepting his help, no matter what the reason. _

_Dib released a heavy sigh. "Fine, okay," he said, holding up his hands as a sign of defeat, to which Zim answered with a sharp zipper-grin. Victory for—_

"_We'll walk together, then."_

"What?_" Zim choked, his antennae swinging up so forcefully they nearly dislodged his wig. _

"_Well, I can't leave you here alone," Dib replied emphatically. "And I'm definitely not staying here with you. We either walk home together, or I knock your ass out and carry you back."_

_Dib looked so serious that Zim had no doubt he had every intention of doing just that. He'd have a fight on his hands, of course, but the Dib could be very dangerous when he wanted._

"_So what'll it be, space-boy? I haven't got all day."_

_Slowly, his spooch twisting with every step, Zim approached Dib with the utmost caution. This could still be a trap of some sort, even if the umbrella was harmless. He wished he didn't have to wear that blasted hair-piece, he would have liked to have his antennae out to better keep tabs on the devious human. He hesitated just outside the protection of the umbrella, watching Dib closely. Dib watched him back, looking just as uncomfortable with the situation, and stayed very still. Finally, carefully, Zim eased up beside him until they were almost touching. _

_They stood like that for a few moments, waiting for the other to make a move of some sort, edgy and taut. Dib took a breath._

"_You wanna go home now?" he asked quietly, tucking a black strand of hair behind his ear. Zim gave a small jerk of his head, his teeth clenched so tightly they might as well have been welded together. And then he did something that sent tremors shooting down Dib's spine. He reached out and grabbed his hand, holding it stiffly at his side in a vice-like grip. _

"_Uh...Zim, wh-what are you...?" Dib stammered, weakly attempting to pull back._

"_I am not doing this because I want to, Dib-stink," Zim informed him disdainfully. "I am merely assuring that you cannot attack me in such close quarters. By securing your hand, I have minimized the threat of assault. That's all. Do not assume that Zim has chosen you to be his Love Pig. You do not deserve such honor."_

"_Well, thank God for that then," Dib replied scathingly, though with no small amount of relief. "For a second there, I thought you'd gone completely off your rocker."_

"_What does this have to do with rocking chairs?" Zim demanded in confusion. The human language screwed with his translation chip like no other language could, and it was unendingly frustrating. _

"_I meant I thought you'd gone all crazy," Dib explained, looking down at their still-joined hands uncomfortably. "People are going to take this in entirely the wrong way," he added flatly. _

"_Zim does not care about what people take," Zim replied haughtily. "We walk home like this, or not at all. And I assure you, Dib-stink, knocking me on my ass will _not_ be an easy task."_

_Dib glared at the Irken for several seconds, and then blew his breath out._

"_Fine, Zim," he growled through gritted teeth. "Let's go."_

_Zim nodded in satisfaction and they made their way down the steps together. Zim aimed a vicious accidentally-on-purpose kick to the moaning jock-drone's head as they passed. Dib tried to hide a grin. He didn't like Torque. The boy was a liar and a bully and he hit his own girlfriend. Dib had no sympathy for him at all. _

_They walked in silence for most of the journey home, Dib's hand clenched tightly in Zim's, and the alien pressed as close to his side as possible without touching him in an attempt to avoid the rain. The both of them were hyper-aware of the other's proximity, and neither relaxed for even a moment. _

"_Zim," Dib sighed at length. "You don't have to let go, but would you please ease up? You're hurting my fingers. I'm not going to do anything."_

_Zim glanced sidelong at the human, sneering at his weakness, and squeezed tighter for a second before he adjusted his grip to something gentler. _

"_Better?" he hissed softly. Dib narrowed his eyes, and clenched his fist around the Irken's as hard as he could. Zim bit back a yip of pain and didn't flinch. He'd felt much worse, after all. But Dib must have noticed something, because he shot Zim a nasty smile.  
_

"_Yes," he said, and released the death-grip he had on the Invader's hand. Zim seethed quietly all the way home, so angry he didn't even notice when they'd arrived, despite the fact they were standing right outside his front door._

"_Hey, quite spacing out, we're here."_

_Zim started and looked up._

"_Ah, yes. So we are," Zim said, as if he'd known that all along. "I was distracted with the many plans to _destroy_ you and your overly large head."_

_Jerkily, Zim grasped the doorknob and quickly moved to step inside, desperate now to be away from the Dib as fast as possible and he snapped his teeth when he was brought up short. _

"_Uhm, Zim...? Can I have my hand back?" Dib asked. Zim looked down, saw that he was still holding Dib's hand, and dropped it as if it had just transformed into an enormous spider. His gaze shot up to lock with Dib's for a fraction of a second, and then he promptly slammed the door in the human's face. _

"_You're welcome!" Dib shouted, and turned to stomp away. A moment later, he yelped and broke out into a run when the lawn gnomes started shooting at him. Zim leaned against the door, breathing deeply and ignoring Gir as the little robot ran circles around his feet. He was staring down at his hand. It felt very warm, and for some bizarre reason, it was tingling. Zim snarled under his breath, marched to the kitchen, and proceeded to scrub it with cleansing chalk for the next two hours. Back in his own house, Dib was doing much the same thing and washing his hand under the hottest water he could handle, trying to dispel the thousands of little pin-pricks running beneath his skin._

.xXx.

Dib faced the fifty or so Irken soldiers with a great deal of bravado, his gun pointed at the nearest one's head, and desperately tried to think of what he was going to do next. For the moment, no one was advancing on him, and some of them stood with their heads cocked to the side as they processed what he'd just said.

"Shoot him!" one finally shouted.

"Cut off his head!" shouted another.

"Shoot him and cut off his head and then shoot his head!" shouted a third. The Irkens howled in agreement and surged towards Dib as one. Dib cursed and shot one right between the eyes. The aliens stared at their fallen comrade for a beat—currently drooling on the floor as he waited for his Pak to fix the gaping hole in his brain—then howled even louder and charged. Dib knew he wasn't going to win, but the blood was singing through his veins with lust for more, and he was determined to take out as many as he could before they brought him down—

"_**DON'T TOUCH HIM****! HE'S MINE!**_"

Several Irken staggered in their hasty attempt to halt, and they looked around in confusion as Zim vaulted over their heads and landed soundlessly in a crouch between them and Dib.

"_I'll kill anyone who touches him_," he hissed, sounding so angry and so dangerous the Irken nearest him backed into the fellows behind them in their hurry to retreat from the mad, terrifying creature. Zim straightened slowly, eyes thin and deadly, and when he was satisfied that they wouldn't make a move, he turned to Dib. A vicious, eager zipper-grin spread across his sharp features. Dib mirrored him with a similar expression. They both sensed the coming fight, and knew that it would be different. There would be no pager-interruptions, there would be no distractions, and there was nothing on Earth or above that was going to pull them apart now. They felt it as surely as the hearts pounding in their chests, the blood ripping through their veins like battery-acid, and the roaring in their heads. This was it. This was the end.

And one of them was going to Lose.

Neither moved to strike. Not a sound was uttered. They simply stood and regarded one another, eyes burning, and silently said goodbye to the strange relationship they'd formed. They weren't friends, but somehow, they weren't enemies anymore, either. Not really. But there was a bond, formed of hate and obsession, respect and familiarity, and an intimate understanding of one another. They were both bitter rivals, and comrades-in-arms, locked into a ten year war in which it was just the two of them. Something had formed between them, warped and twisted and unhealthy, and it twined around them like the coils of a snake. At times, Dib thought it might crush the life out of him, it bound them together so tightly. And somewhere, in the deepest, darkest corner of his heart, a part of him broke at the thought of severing that tie.

That was why he hesitated.

However, the thought that something was going to come to an end that night had not even crossed Zim's mind. All that was shrieking through his head was that, right now, he would finally get to claim victory. It set his blood on fire, and took over his mind so wholly that he could think of nothing else but that singular notion. There was was nothing now but the mission. After all his waiting, and planning, and determination he was finally, _finally _going to complete his mission. He was going to beat Dib, no matter what it took. No matter what it cost. And, even if he didn't realize it then, it would cost him more than he'd ever known. It would cost him dearly. But he didn't know that yet. All he knew was that he was going to Win.

And that was why he struck first.

Zim moved so fast Dib barely had time to react. He whipped up his gun in the nick of time, and the razor tip of Zim's mechanical leg glanced off the barrel with a sharp screech of metal. Dib fired at the Irken's head, Zim spun to the side. Another leg shot out and Dib grabbed it, wrenching hard until it popped right out of Zim's Pak. The alien snarled and slashed at his face, trailing three thin lines of blood in Dib's cheek. The human's foot shot out like a piston and smashed hard into the Invader's solar plexus. He staggered back, spitting blood, and leapt to the side when Dib fired at him again. Zig-zagging, he rolled around to Dib's back and flew at him. Dib whirled around in time to throw an arm out and catch Zim's shoulder in a glancing blow. It threw him off enough so that the steel leg aimed at Dib's heart slashed into his shoulder instead. A red spray of blood splattered across the floor. Dib cried out in surprise, seized hold of Zim's antennae, and twisted savagely. The Irken screamed shrilly, and those watching flinched hard, their own antennae flattening against their skulls. Zim, still shrieking, writhed and latched onto Dib's arm, biting down hard. Dib yelped and wrenched away.

They paused a moment, panting heavily, and Zim smiled through the pain. For some reason, Dib had been reluctant, but now he was grinning too. Entirely caught up in the fight, the thrill, their own little world. Good.

This time, Dib moved first. Advancing slowly, he pumped the gun, and aimed it straight at Zim's chest. Not for his heart, but the Pak behind it. Dib had learned long ago that shooting the alien anywhere else had little effect. Zim was ready for it, and he ducked when Dib pulled the trigger. He felt the blast blaze straight between his antennae, hissing from the unpleasant tingle it left behind. There was a startled cry behind him, and Zim glanced back to find that an Irken had just been tall enough to get one of his eyes blown out. All that was left of it was a blueish sludge that oozed from the socket. The Irken opened his mouth and screamed, one hand clamped over the missing eye, dark green blood gushing out through his fingers.

Neither combatant gave him a second thought, and the rest of the Irkens in the room fell over themselves in an attempt to move out of their way. The fight was escalating, neuron blasts bouncing crazily off the walls, the _skrit-__skrit _of metallic spider legs, and the room filled with unintelligible screams, shrieks, the smack of flesh striking flesh, clothes tearing, skin ripping open, the _snrk-krak _of breaking bones...

Zim and Dib were blind to all else but each other, spitting foul insults and vomiting death-threats, surrounded in a circle of red-green blood. Zim had the advantage of his Pak and his viper-strike speed, but Dib was tougher and stronger, and neither was gaining any ground. Even when the neuron charger eventually fizzled out, and Zim let out a manic bark of laughter when it died, Dib merely chucked it at his head as hard as he could. The insect ducked out of the way, snapping out a curse, and was distracted enough that he didn't see the human charge until Dib had barreled right into his chest. They both went tumbling to the floor, rolling end over end, Zim stabbing wildly with his Pak legs and Dib punching every bit of Irken flesh he could reach. And then one of those insidious spider legs slid oh-so-smoothly through his shoulder—oh, oh, hear his scream of agony and feel the flesh give way so easily—and flung him across the room. Dib landed with a crunch, fetched upside-down against one of the control panels, and lay shaken, coughing, bleeding...and still the side of his mouth quirked up in a dazed smile-smirk, just showing the narrowest edge of teeth.

"Surrender, Dib-stink!" Zim crowed, his uniform, like Dib's clothes, glistening green-and-red and burning because of it. But he ignored that, because he was filled to choking with a sparking stardust energy that seethed up in his throat and whipped his eyes to the color of frothing blood. He was a snapping thing, a feral thing, full of himself and Dib and _life, life, life_ (-and everything was spiraling out of control-)

"You give up, then?" Dib asked, taking Zim's obvious question to a be a statement, just to be obnoxious, and he slowly righted himself, a disjointed chuckle bubbling gleefully up from the bowels of his belly (_too far this time_). His shoulder was quickly becoming a darker and darker stain of deep, deep red—such a pretty color—and he glared at Zim with clear, clever, cutting, quick eyes. Eyes that gazed up to the stars and wished hard that he could kick his heels up and—and—_blast-off_. "Okay, I accept." (_I think we've gone too far..._)

It wasn't about saving the human race, and it wasn't about the mission. Not even that, anymore. It was just them, and the on-going battle that had somehow, impossibly become so routine, so profoundly ingrained that to dwell in a state of normalcy, even for a few days, caused them to chaff and rebel and grow restless. Every time that stagnation had come to seep into their bones, they kicked off and sought the other out just to start something, no matter how small. As long as it was something. Boredom was an enemy neither was willing to face alone.

Perhaps it might have gone on forever, a never-ending struggle that would stretch on into eternity—but only until one of them died because neither would ever admit defeat—if Mar had not gotten impatient first. He stood off to the side, tucked into a hidden, sheltered corner away from the carnage and chaos. Away from the shrieking, burning Irkens that had the misfortune to be splattered with the curious substance of an even curiouser creature. An intriguing creature, and already his mind was whirring with possibilities as he stood off to the side and watched, head cocked, antennae perked, with cold clinical eyes.

_I want him._

He knew the Control Brains heard him, because suddenly Zim wasn't there anymore. His body still cackled, insane and unhinged, but his eyes were empty garnet voids as Their Will came down on his. They had no trouble invading him this time—already infected with the defective virus running rampant through his Pak—and were unaffected as they abruptly ripped open his defenses like wet paper and penetrated his very core, and Zim couldn't even scream through the agony of the worst of violations. The Irken wasn't prepared, his body spasmed in a knee-jerk reaction, his fear and rage and horror and resistance coldly kicked aside. They burned all the way down, lighting up every dark, hidden corner of his mind, ransacking every memory and dragging it out for Zim to _see_ and _remember_ and _writhe_...and then they found what they were looking for, buried in the deepest level of his subconscious. They flipped the switch, and turned off the lights, and were gone from Zim's recollection before he could grasp what was happening.

But then thoughts that were his own and not his own came bubbling softly to the surface and made a small suggestion, pushing him gently onto a train of thought, and it was impossible to tell if it was his own idea or Theirs. It didn't matter, because Zim could no longer tell the difference anyway.

(...too far...)

(..._too late to turn back)_

**_To be continued..._**

* * *

**Disclaimer: I have NEVER owned Invader Zim. And neither will you. **

**Zohmygawd. This chapter ran longer than usual, didn't it? The climax to the Invasion should be coming next chapter, and since there's a lot of stuff that's still going to happen before we get to the ZADR, I threw in the rain scene! In know, I know, it's the most cliche ZADR scene ever, but I love it and never get tired of it, so here's my own version. You're probably going to see more flash backs like it, which will slowly shed light on how their relationship in this fic developed, all of which will be in italics in case any of you were confused. **

**Also, I have the next chapter all written up-AND I WON'T POST IT UNTIL YOU REVIEW! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!**

**So do it.**

**Raha  
**


	12. Heartsick

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Twelve: Heartsick**

* * *

Dib knew something was wrong, even if he didn't know what it was. He watched Zim jerk and go rigid, watched his antennae jump and shudder, watched as Zim's eyes went flat and dead. And then Zim cackled; a brain-sick chainsaw hacking, his head thrown back and his spine bent nearly in two, theat made Dib's ears want to crawl inside his skull to escape the sound of it. His hackles rose when the alien suddenly straightened and looked at him without really seeing him through the murky film that had settled over his eyes, head cocked to the side in silent inquiry (_how would you like to die..._?), a wide Cheshire Cat grin breaking his face into something horrific and twisted and unfamiliar—

Dib didn't see Zim move. One second, the Irken was standing ten feet away, and the next he'd slammed Dib to the floor with enough force to crack the boy's head open and the room melted into itself and the stars wheeled across the cosmos...Dib blinked up at the Zim-creature slowly, dazed and disoriented, while blood matted into his hair and spread into a sluggish halo-stain around him. A coil of black fear twined through the under-deep of his belly and reached out a delicate claw to snag at his heart, but he pushed it away, too stubborn to admit that Zim was scaring him witless. Or maybe he was being stubborn because he was scared _for _Zim, as well, because whatever horror had moved into the Irken's body, it was _not _his enemy. Zim's eyes had emptied of everything, dulled to the color of drying blood, and even though his sharp zipper-teeth were still bared in a mad disjointed smile, his hollow eyes did not reflect it at all. No glimmer, no spark, no light. Zim was gone, and Dib hated the thing that had taken his place.

"ZIM...!" He snarled, shoving at the Irken, trying to dislodge the claws buried in his shoulders—in vain, in vain. "What the hell is wrong with you? Get off me! Snap out of it!"

But Zim only laughed, a strange strangled giggle that bubbled up his throat and didn't sound like him at all.

"I've enjoyed this little game of ours, Dib-stink," he murmured, and his voice garbled a soft spattered hiccuping sound that was not his own.

"_Game_?" Dib cried. "When has this _ever_ been a—"

"But what else could it be?" Zim mused, shaking his head. "Of course it was a game. You would have been dead long ago, if Zim had not found you amusing in your attempts to save your pitiful race. I took pity on you, Dib-worm, and I played along. And now I am tired of playing. It was fun while it lasted, and now it's over, and I am going to Win."

Zim hauled Dib to his feet by his lapels and shoved him towards a group of on-looking Irkens. They cowered away from the creature and the burning blood he was splattered with.

"Restrain them," whispered Mar, and though his command went unheard, the Irkens surged forward and grasped at the shaking boy with their claws and their Pak limbs and they forced Dib to his knees. Several more surrounded the strange dark child who had climbed from the the Spittle Runner, despite her black-eyed glare and the creeping coldness in the air around her. But she stood still as a dozen blasters were aimed straight at her head. Mar moved silent as a wraith, threading his way through the throng; they parted before him, and didn't even know he was there. He approached the boy, still struggling valiantly with his arms wrenched cruelly behind his back, his once-brown eyes flashing near gold in their fear and desperation. Mar gently ran his hand through the child's ink-black hair, before he twisted viciously and wrenched the creature's head up so that he could _watch_...

Zim was still grinning, as always malevolent and ruthless and yet...utterly devoid of all thought or feeling or care. As if everything—_everything—_really had been just a game, an amusing past-time for the stranded alien, a joke. Something cold and dark and painful hit Dib's heart, encasing it in steely tendrils, while his lungs filled up with ice, and his insides trembled. He didn't want to believe it, because even though they were bitter enemies, even though they hated each other's guts, even though neither would have hesitated to kill the other if just given the chance, even then, _even then_—

—_don't look away. Don't turn your back on me. Don't ever drop your guard. I'm always watching. I'm biting at your heels, I'm snapping from your shadow, and I'm always waiting for a chance. One chance, that's all I need. And then this will be over, and **I**__ will be the one to end you—_

He valued Zim above all else. To him, Zim had become an obsession, a drive, a purpose to which all other things paled in comparison. Dib never switched off because he never wanted to, or even worse, he never _could_. The chase was too thrilling, too intoxicating, too _addictive_. He was enthralled with the Irken, plain and simple. Perhaps because of his obsession with the paranormal? Or perhaps it ran deeper than that. Zim was also an escape. Upon his arrival, Zim had taken the thin veil of normalcy draped across Dib's little world like a blanket of snow—untouched and perfect and white—and stomped all over it. And now, after ten years, he'd left countless footprints and Irken flags, ice forts and scattered snowballs, sled tracks and angel silhouettes (or were they devils, with their little Irken horns?) Yes, Zim was certainly an escape from all that was normal, mundane, and suffocating. He made life exciting, even when he wasn't trying to destroy the world and they were merely entertaining themselves with the familiar everyday fights—so rehearsed they ran like clockwork—over stupid things like girlfriends and naughty magazines and whatever else didn't matter anymore.

And Dib had thought that, somehow, Zim valued him in return. Certainly not in the same way, but Zim never came up with a plan of world domination without somehow getting Dib involved, even if he had to march right up to the boy and announce his latest intentions outright. It was a challenge, he knew: _Try and stop me, if you can._ For a creature that valued his mission so much, to the point that even after a decade he was still plugging away at it, this particular habit of his seemed to get in his way quite a bit. Not that Dib was complaining, of course. But it was as if the Invader's goals had slowly shifted from _Conquer Earth_ to _Conquer Dib_, and only by doing so would the Irken be free to complete his mission.

And that was why Dib's heart was constricting, his vision blurring with angry tears, because Zim had _not _conquered him. They weren't friends, and yet they weren't enemies...but they were everything in between, all twisted up and jumbled together and doubled-over backwards. Somehow, Dib had been certain that meant _something_, because after all they'd been through together, after everything that had happened, Zim at least owed him that much (_...how would you like to die_?)

But maybe...maybe...

Zim had lied.

The realization that maybe it didn't mean anything after all—just a game, just a joke—cold-cocked him straight through the last ten years of hatred-rivalry-justice-pursuit-purpose-exhilaration-validation-frustration-obsession-_life_...and Dib's heart was breaking now because he thought, out of everyone he knew, Zim was the one person who would _always_ take him seriously.

And yet here he was. Held down, helpless to do anything but sit and watch in disbelief as Zim turned his back and laid his hands over the control panel of the Massive. There was no smirking triumph or bark of sneering laughter. Zim didn't even look back to gloat over Dib's reaction as he flipped the transceiver on and said in a callous, bored voice: "Burn them all."

Dib could see the Earth through the colossal window of the observation deck, so thickly surrounded by Irken ships it was hazed over, as if covered by a red mist or swarm of insects—

_On Earth there was an awful, terrible silence—an awful, terrible noise—an awful, terrible silence._

—and a flash of light shot straight through Dib's retinas, burning a yellow-black hole in his vision before he could close his eyes. There was a distant _whumph_, and perhaps he imagined it, but just for a moment he thought he caught a short keening wail...as if everyone on Earth had suddenly started screaming, and were just as suddenly cut off. Or perhaps he had not _heard_ it, so much as felt the culminate fear of every human being on the planet resounding right through his soul...and then it was quiet. A crushing loneliness, one he did not yet understand, because there had _always_ been people...

Dib was very still, blinking away the last of the sun-spots dotting his vision, before he looked up and stared in confusion because...Distantly, he heard Gaz screaming, but he didn't think about that because...A cold, black thing was wrapping around his insides and slowly growing, tearing at his throat and he wanted to scream too because...

_The earth was gone. _

Just...vanished. There were no remains, no debris, nothing but the thin red veil of the Irken swarm, outlining the space where the Earth should have been. The black thing was rapidly crushing his mind, and lungs, and heart—and then he was screaming. In fury, in hatred, in betrayal because the Earth was gone and he was still here and Zim had _promised_...

.xXx.

"_How would you like to die?"_

_Dib glanced up from his lunch as Zim dropped into the seat next to his, fake blue eyes narrowed and his two-fingered hands (_**how**_ did people not notice that?) steepled in front of him. From the look of him, this was Serious Business. Dib raised a brow at him._

"_Carrot stick?" he asked after a moment of consideration, and politely offered one to the Invader. Zim regarded Dib and his offering with cold disdain. He'd learned the hard way that carrots were full of water, courtesy of the Dib, and knew neither of them would forget _that_ incident very soon...which made what to anyone else was a friendly and harmless gesture, a thinly veiled threat of pain in the Irken's eyes. Zim sneered. He would play along._

"_Have you the brain worms?" he demanded in scathing tones."Death by carrot sticks is hardly becoming an enemy of Zim, no matter how intriguing—Dib-stink, I don't see what's so funny." His tone had been disparaging, but there was a lilt in his voice that suggested he might have been joking. Poking fun at Dib's scantily clad threat._

_Dib had nearly snorted his drink up his nose he was laughing so hard, and was currently trying not to choke or spray it out everywhere. Zim watched him passively, secretly pleased that Dib understood the humor. It took the boy a moment to get himself under control, and then he continued as if nothing had happened. _

"_That's not what I meant," Dib said coolly, but there was still an amused glint in his eyes. "I figured if I ignored the question you'd take your crazy somewhere else."_

_Zim snorted very well for someone who didn't have a nose. "I was serious, dirt-monkey," he replied in clipped, contemptuous tones. "I want to know how you want to die."_

"_Old age," Dib replied without missing a beat. Zim's brows knit._

"_When will that be?" he asked._

"_I'd say in about ninety years, give or take," Dib shrugged. _

"_Out of the question," Zim said with a firm shake of his head. "Maybe I should have made myself more clear so as not to confuse your primitive little pig brain: how would you like me to kill you?"_

_Dib shot Zim a flat, level glare. "You're giving me a choice? How thoughtful of you." His tone was anything but grateful, and Zim had been on Earth long enough to recognize sarcasm when he heard it. _

"_Yes, yes, be thankful that Zim is affording you this honor," he said magnanimously, a jeering lilt on his tongue and a malignant glint in his eyes. It was Dib's turn to snort, but he couldn't help the amused tug at the corner of his mouth. He manipulated it into a proper sneer before it could become anything close to a smile. _

"_So, what, I get to pick anything?" Dib asked nonchalantly, as if he were discussing the weather or whatever the homework was for that evening. _

"_Anything you want," Zim replied, with a generous wave of his hand. Dib sat back and thought about it. Despite his casual demeanor, he was actually a little taken aback. Not at the nature of the question, but why it was asked in the first place. Because, despite his belittlement, it _**was**_ thoughtful and it _**was**_ an honor...in a sick, twisted kind of way. For what was more significant a gift between two enemies bent of the other's death, than the means of that death itself? It meant that Zim regarded him as more than just a nuisance or an obstacle—Zim saw him as a nemesis, one worthy of special attention. A small part of Dib's heart recoiled at that thought, and another railed against it, but the rest of him was...almost flattered. _

"_What brought this on?" he asked softly, and eyed the Irken over the top of his glasses, his expression guarded. A slow, sharp grin drifted across Zim's features, showing just the barest razor-edge of teeth. _

"_You are a worthy opponent, Dib," he replied, and for once did not add insult to the name, either in word or inflection. "And, if circumstances allow, Zim has decided to let you choose the means of your death. Take your time...there's no hurry."_

_Dib glowered at the alien and rolled his eyes, shifting uncomfortably under the Irken's gaze. He was harboring serious doubts in Zim's capability to kill him...but...sometimes, he got the feeling that it was really just a big game. Sure, there were some pretty high stakes if he were to lose, the fate of the world hung in the balance after all, but despite everything...through all the attempts to off him Dib had somehow gotten the distinct impression that Zim wasn't really trying all that hard. That, if he really wanted to, he could slip into Dib's room and slit his throat in his sleep._

_And then Dib's paranoid mind began to churn, and he wondered if Zim was getting tired of playing. That maybe he was asking because he wanted to end the game, once and for all. Then..._

_How did he wish to die?_

_Quickly? Slowly? Painfully? Peacefully?_

_Dib's eyes had dropped to the table, and his teeth clenched in defiance, but then he looked up...and suddenly he couldn't breathe and he couldn't look away, caught and pinned down by the intensity of Zim's gaze. And suddenly he was very, very afraid. _

"_If I don't have you on an operating table first, I assume?" he asked, trying to sound assured and offhanded, but it came out shaky and breathless. Zim _hmm'd_ and leaned forward, his eyes boring into Dib's and the razor-grin widening ever so slightly. It dimly occurred to Dib that Zim was just trying to psych him out, and he took a discreet, steadying breath. _

"_Don't do it in my sleep," he warned, meeting Zim's eyes resolutely. "I want to see it coming. And make it quick, cause I swear if you try and drag it out I'll find a way to take you down with me."_

"_Is that all?" Zim practically purred. Dib looked away, thinking, and slowly shook his head._

"_If...If by some miracle, you find a way to destroy the Earth...Or the Armada shows up and decides to raze the place to the ground..." Dib shivered slightly and swallowed, not meeting Zim's eyes. "Then...then I want _you _to kill me."_

_Zim was deathly silent, and Dib glanced up at him. The Irken was very still in his chair, his back rigid, and his eyes were wide with shock. He hadn't been expecting that._

"_It's not that I have a death wish, or anything, but...I've defended this place all my life," the boy explained. "It...it wouldn't be right if the world died, and I kept living. And I won't be your slave. I'll kill _myself_ before I let that happen."_

"_But you...you _want_ me to kill you...?" Zim asked, not quite sure if he had heard correctly. _

"_I won't make it easy," Dib said, quietly looking up at the alien with a calm, disturbing resolve. "I won't stop coming after you. I'll chase you to the end of the universe if I have to, until one of us is dead..." -_and if you go first, I'll follow right after-_ "So I suggest you take me out soon as you can. Because...because it's got to be you. No one else, Zim."_

"_No," Zim murmured. "No one else."_

_And then abruptly the Irken was towering over him, one foot planted between Dib's legs, and his hands were gripping the boy's shoulders, his claws digging into the skin. Dib froze, and actually shrank back in his seat as his foe severely invaded his personal space._

"_It would be my pleasure to end you," Zim hissed lowly into the human's ear, close enough that Dib could feel his breath fan across his cheek in a heady caress. "I only regret that I will not be able to rub my victory in your face for very long, before your imminent demise."_

"_Yeah? Cross your heart?" Dib asked snidely, brow cocked and his mouth quirked in a rueful grin. Zim met his gaze, so close his mouth ghosted over Dib's in an almost-kiss..._

"_Cross my heart," Zim replied, but his voice was deadly and his smile was sharp and his eyes were brightly burning._

"_Well...what about you then?" Dib asked with a curious tilt of his head. "How would you like to die?"_

_Zim only smirked in return, his expression brimming over with confident, mocking arrogance. "I won't," he replied simply, in a scoffing sing-song voice. "As if a filthy dirt-muncher like you could defeat the Almighty Zim. The idea is utterly preposterous, worm-baby."_

_Dib let out an annoyed, disgusted sound._

"_Get away from me, you freak!" he snarled, braced his foot against Zim's chest, and shoved him away. Zim fell back in his chair, his chin resting in one hand as he chuckled quietly to himself, and then his eyes flicked up and Dib read in them a look of such calculated contempt, such possessive hate that it chilled him down to his toes._

"_That is, of course, if I don't take you out in your sleep after all," Zim hissed softly, and abruptly Dib could not get out of there fast enough. He lurched up from his seat, shot Zim the darkest, filthiest, most scornful look he could muster and stomped away. He had to force himself not to bolt._

"_As if you could take me out, even if I _was_ asleep!" he fired back over his shoulder._

"_Pleasant dreams, Dib-stink," Zim called after him. Dib couldn't help it; he broke into a run, hating that he'd gotten so freaked out, and disgusted at himself. _

_That night, he didn't sleep at all, Zim's laughter still ringing in his ears. _

.xXx.

Dib was screaming. Hot, black, scorching fury was welling up in his throat and spewing through his teeth so forcefully it nearly tore his lungs out with it. He lashed out blindly at the Irkens holding him back, straining towards Zim with his hands out-stretched and wanting nothing more in that moment than to strangle the life right out of his disgusting red eyes. He wanted to rip the Irken's Pak out of his spine and mangle every single wire, smash the vile contraption with a hammer, break it into a thousand pieces and watch Zim slowly lose his mind. He wanted to snap every one of Zim's fingers, crush his bones to dust, tear his limbs off and watch him _writhe_ like the cockroach he was before he crunched the stupid little insect's head beneath his heel.

Never before, in all the years they'd known each other, had Dib wished so fervently for Zim's death. The depth of his hatred was slowly sinking into deeper, colder levels; so consuming, so encompassing, and so _painful_ that Dib was incapable of feeling anything else. It flooded his heart, and choked his insides, and filled his mind until he thought he would _**die **_from all the hate in his veins. He couldn't even put words to it—the rage, agony, loss, and _oh God _Zim was just standing there like it was _nothing—_and the Massive resounded with his keening; incomprehensible, inconsolable, inhuman. The world had come to an end, and Dib had Lost, and the taste of it was bitter as bile. He felt, impossibly, betrayed. As ridiculous as it seemed, his own enemy had stabbed him in the back, and the what a stupid thing it was to have never seen it coming. Never even expected that it was possible. It was an unspoken rule, that only they, and they alone, could bring the other down. It was a pact that had lasted for over ten years—one must directly defeat the other before they could claim Victory. In this, and this alone, Dib had trusted Zim. And Zim had just broken it. He'd allowed _outsiders _into their fight, and he had claimed Victory before it was Won. He had _cheated_, and he had _lied_, and somehow, Dib was going to make him pay dearly. He would not be a joke, and he would not be used.

"_I'll kill you, Zim!_" he shouted hoarsely, digging in his heels as he was dragged away, his voice a horrible, gasping sob. Tears ran hot tracks down his cheeks, and he struggled to speak. "I'll rip apart every-everything important to you...! I'll rip your h-heart out! Do you hear me? I'LL _KILL_ YOU! _I'LL **KILL** YOU!_ **_I'LL __KILL__ YOU!_**"

But Zim simply stood with his back turned and didn't answer. As if he didn't care at all.

**_To be continued..._**

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own.**

**Zim's a personal space invader! **

**I know, it doesn't look very hopeful in regards to any ZADR happening soon, but be paaatient~ Appearances can be deceiving. This is going to be a long fic, and I promise you'll get A LOT of zadr before it winds down to the end. That, and a lot of angst. Yeah, so this chappie was mostly me exploring more of Dib and Zim's twisted relationship at this point. It's only going to get more mangled from here on out. Tell me what you thought of it. **

**Raha**


	13. Mindless

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Thirteen: Mindless**

* * *

_Scuggs Thwacky thwacked his fist against the dark-haired boy's face, smirking as he felt the little freak's nose give way with a satisfying crunch. He watched the kid crumple into the dirt; scuffing his hands, curling in on himself, moaning pitifully. Scuggs grinned at his friends, who laughed in a mean and nasty way, before he drove his foot as hard as he could into the boy's ribs. Four-Eyes yelped loudly, tears streaming down his too-pale face, to mingle with the blood and snot pouring from his nostrils. It looked like he'd lost a few teeth, too. _

"_Ya had enough, shrimpy?" Scuggs jeered, kneeling to grab a fistful of the boy's messy hair. "Or do ya feel like poppin' off again? We don't mind goin' another round, right fellahs?"_

_The six or so boys that surrounded the pair nodded eagerly, shouting insults and threats. Scuggs squinted his piggy-eyes down at the mangled heap of bruised flesh and broken bones. The kid shook his head weakly, choking and sobbing. _

"_That's a good boy," Scuggs told him, contempt thick in his voice. He brutally mashed the boy's head into the ground, and stood to dust himself off—_

_And suddenly found himself flat on his back, squealing like a gutted hog and clutching at his broken jaw._

"_DIB-STINK! WHAT ON IRK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"_

_Shrinking at the furious shout, the bloodied boy turned his head and dimly looked up at his rescuer, trying to see despite the sorry state his glasses were in, all smudged up and mangled. A pale, scruffy, dark-haired youth stood over him. A black trench coat swished about his ankles, and his mussed hair defied gravity. His boots were set apart and he was looking down at the still-shrieking Scuggs with clenched fists, and a frown in his toffee-eyes. He didn't look like someone who should be messed with. He was slender and lanky, but his small frame was thickly muscled and he balanced with perfect precision upon sturdy legs and light feet, facing down the rest of Thwacky's Lackeys with a lazy grin. Bold as Brass. _

_Dib glanced away from Scuggs's goons, down at the groaning bespectacled carcass collapsed on the ground, and then shot a long-suffering look over his shoulder at Zim. The alien stood tapping his foot, his arms crossed huffily, and a scowl upon his face. False blue eyes were narrowed in irritation, and he was grinding his teeth. _

"_Come on, Zim," Dib chided the Irken wearily. "What was I supposed to do? Stand by and watch them beat the kid half to death? You can wait a few minutes while I deal with this lot, can't you?"_

"_...the hell do ya think _you_ are?" demanded one of the thugs in scandalized stupefaction. "You can't just—" But he cut off abruptly when Dib kicked him in the chest. The boy went sprawling, and making a lot of noise about it. Like a little howly monkey._

"_Hey, back off, this ain't none a yer—!" shouted another boy before Dib kneed him in the groin. That was about the time the rest of the boys gathered their wits together and charged Dib, roaring uproariously and swinging their meaty fists. _

"_No, I am NOT coming on and I will NOT wait!" Zim was yelling crossly in the meantime, while Dib was a frenzy of punches-kicks-twists-dodges-spins-jumps-and-rolls. "I am ZIM! And YOU were not given permission to run off in the middle of OUR fight, especially to help some helpless, leaky, squeaky **worm-baby**!"_

"_Jeez, Zim, jealous much?" Dib retorted dryly, rolling his eyes as he twisted a boy's hand behind his back and shoved him into one of his cohorts. _

"_What **is **__it with you humans and jelly?" Zim shrieked, shaking a claw at Dib from where he stood off to the side-lines, well out of the way of the six-to-one brawl, and so completely ignoring the scene that Dib doubted he even noticed what was happening. Or cared in the slightest. _

"_I never said anything **about** jelly! Fix your translator!" Dib snapped back peevishly, ducking as one of the punk-kids swung clumsily at him. _

"_My translator is just FINE, stink-beast!" Zim exploded, deftly side-stepping as one of the boys went flying past him, not batting an eye. "It's your _revolting_ human language that's the problem!" _

"_Oh, that is just _typical_!" Dib raved as he cracked the heel of his fist against a bully's chin. "You're all but incomprehensible, but is it your fault? Noooo, of course not! _You_ have to blame the _language_!"_

"_Shut your rotting pie mouth!" Zim screeched. "You will NOT ignore our fight to play with these brainless mud monkeys! And I won't let you escape this time, meat-sack, no matter how annoying you are! I wasn't finished with you or your freakishly over-sized head, which is **abnormally large**!"_

"_MY HEAD IS NOT BIG!" Dib shouted at the tops of his lungs, whirling on his heel to snarl at the Invader, and for a moment utterly forgetting he was in the middle of a fight. "Say that **one more time** and I swear to _Gawd_—"_

_And that's when Scuggs's hammer-fist collided solidly with his cheek. Dib hit the ground hard, spitting blood and foul profanities. But before he could even get his feet under him again, before he could even think about getting up at all, Scuggs was _**screaming**_**—**and Dib looked up to find the boy clawing at his face, dark blood spurting through his fingers where his eyes were supposed to be..._

_Abruptly something blocked his view, and Dib's gaze traveled slowly upwards to find that Zim had moved to stand directly over him, his boots cemented immovably to the asphalt on either side on Dib's angular hips. The Irken was stiff as a board, his back ramrod straight. His claws were tight fists at his sides, and his head was low, like a thoroughly pissed off bull getting ready to charge. Dib couldn't see his face, but he could hear the soft hiss and the click of snapping teeth. He imagined Zim's false eyes were thin and mean.__ And in Zim's hand dangled two lovely blue peepers. A chill went all the way down Dib's spine, from his medulla oblongata to his tail bone._

_Scuggs fell thrashing to the ground, his cheeks streaked with red, staring up at the sky with his horrible empty eye-sockets, shrilly shrieking. His buddies stood in petrified silence, their gazes flicking convulsively between the terrible sight (sightless and still squealing) and the terrible snarling thing before them._

___Most people usually stayed the hell away from Zim. And a lot of the time they didn't really know why. Maybe it was that little voice in their heads that warned them to keep their distance. Normally, his strange green skin and unusual speech pattern would have provoked many a bully, but he had remained untroubled throughout the skool year. The only one (other than Dib, but then again, Dib was just _crazy_) to have ever crossed the unnerving little spider-psycho was Torque Smacky...and maybe the whispered rumors that Zim had something to do with his disappearance warded off anyone else who might have tried to provoke him. __Of course____, the rumors were completely baseless, and had really only started because of the disturbing glint that lit Zim's eyes and the sharp grin he tried to hide every time the missing boy's name was mentioned._

___Needless to say, most people usually stayed the hell away from Zim. There was just something..._off_...about him, and perhaps he'd had nothing to do with Torque__—__but there were plenty of other people who could have sworn they'd had more inside bits before they'd laid a hand on the strange, green-skinned boy-creature. Again, Dib was the only one to have ever messed with Zim, and come back with all his pieces still intact, time after time. __  
_

_They wondered if Scuggs would be that lucky._

"_You have interfered enough," Zim hissed, low and dangerous in his throat, his whole body tensed as if he would scratch the faces off anyone who moved. Nobody twitched so much as a muscle. Except, of course, for Dib.  
_

"_Oh, that's just great! What the HELL, Zim? I can't believe you just—just—Jesus his _eyes_! And, oh Gawd, lookit the blood...you sick little freak! There was no reason to do that! Dammit, Zim, lemme up! I'm gonna—"_

"_THWACKY!" Zim barked, ignoring the ranting human wrestling uselessly with one of his legs. He was standing on the coat-tails of Dib's jacket and effectively pinning the human to the ground. Scuggs froze, whimpers and spit dribbling from his quivering lips, head turning blindly in Zim's direction. "Hear me now, you filthy mud-munching flesh bags." Zim swiped his hand through the air, pointing at the frozen humans. His voice was soft and quiet. Insidious. _

"—_trying for YEARS to expose you, and YOU! You just go off and pull some crazy stunt like this! And Christ, just look at those _idiots_, they don't even have a clue! I mean, _come on! _You could staple a sign to your forehead that says 'I'M AN ALIEN' and I bet you anything none of these stupid moronic _troglodytes _will ever wise up—" _

"_This is MY human, and MINE alone to do with as I wish," Zim growled. "Only I am authorized to harm him. You touch him again, or interrupt us once more with this **useless, disgusting drivel—**" he spat at the bespectacled boy still cowering on the ground, "—you will come to experience a pain unlike _**any other**_ pain you have felt before. Is that understood, swine-buckets?"_

"—_tear all your organs out and throw them on the ground and...and...JUMP on them! And keep jumping on them, until there's nothing left! And even then, you just watch, I bet everybody'll still think I'm just some poor insane boy even _with_ your guts splattered all over the place and—Wait. What?"_

_The boys, bullies and bullied alike, nodded wordlessly, too afraid to speak as Zim fixed them with a frigid, furious stare. The alien glared some more to make sure they got the point, and nodded once, satisfied. Then he reached back over his shoulder into his Pak and withdrew two items. The first was a pair of synthetic human eyes. The Irken stepped away from Dib to seize a fistful of Scuggs's hair, earning a panicky yelp, and screwed the eyes into his empty sockets with a revolting squelching noise, careful not to get any blood on himself. The effect was immediate. Scuggs stiffened, blinked once, and fell flat on his face. The other item Zim held was an odd, silver, cylindrical device. To Dib it looked like a pen of some kind, but without a tip, and there were three little buttons on one end. _

"_Now if you would all direct your attention here..." Zim said, tapping a claw against the end of the pen. The boys obediently leaned in to look, too afraid of what would happen if they didn't. Zim pressed one of those buttons with his thumb, there was a flash of red, and the boys' terror-stricken faces slackened into calm impassiveness._

"_What you just saw here today was nothing more than a trick of the light, brought on by the lack of your loathsome Earth water, no food-stuffs, and stupidness. You will return to your dis_gus_ting housing units and forget this ever happened," Zim said, in a bored, quick, rehearsed manner that sounded like he'd said such a thing before. Several times. Dib gaped at him, his expression frozen between shocked outrage and incredulous disbelief. _

"_Where the hell did you get that thing?" he demanded, glancing back and forth between Zim and the blank-eyed boys. Zim shot him a sharp, crooked grin.  
_

"_Zim made it," he said, with no small amount of self-satisfied smugness. _

"_What...what does it do?" Dib got to his feet with wary caution._

"_It erases memories, Dib-thing," Zim replied, still with his twisted grin, and off-handedly twirled the device in his fingers. "Just one little flash, and all your icky memories go bye-bye. I swear, you humans have such pitiful brain-meats—"_

"_Then what, you just make up a new one?" Dib interrupted him curiously, waving his hand in front of one of the kid's faces, the one he'd ditched Zim to rescue. The kid stared straight ahead, round glassed cracked and askew, completely unresponsive. _

"_Exactly," Zim replied proudly, puffing out his chest a little, and buffed his nails. "Zim is a genius after all."_

_Zim preened while Dib regarded him with a level-eyed stare. He could just see the terror culminating on the human's pink pig face. Any minute now, the Dib would drop to his knees, shower him with praise for his unadulterated brilliance, and beg Zim not to erase his pitiful mind—_

"_And that load of bull-crap was the best cover-story you could come up with?" Dib demanded after a moment, and the alien choked on his indignation, throughly whacked over the head with the sheer amount of scorn in Dib's voice. Because of it, he didn't notice the dismay._

"_My lies are _flawless_, Mud-Monkey!" he screeched. "Zim would like to see you come up with a better one!" _

"_I could come up with a _hundred_ lies better than that!" Dib retorted, throwing his hands in the air. "Honestly, you Irkens have __**no**__ imagination."_

"_LIES!" Zim shrieked."I'll have you know our national image is stamped across the galaxy!"_

"_Oh, for Pete's sake, would you give it a rest?" Dib snapped. "You don't have a clue what I'm talking about, so just _shut up_."_

_Zim opened his mouth to ask who this Pete person was, but Dib held up his palm in a 'talk to the hand' gesture and turned away to address the patiently waiting, expressionless boys._

"_Okay, you jerks, listen up," he said with authority. "Ignore what he just said. Your brains have just been _fried_ by an alien bent on world domination, and—HEY! Zim, let go of my head! Stoppit!"_

"_That is the _truth_, Dib-stink," Zim sneered with contempt. "You were supposed to lie to them. I think you're confused."_

"_Uhh...can we go home now...?" one of the thugs asked in a very, very small voice. _

"_No," Zim replied flatly, and flashed them again. Dib hurriedly shielded his face with his arms._

"_Dammit, Zim, you're gonna give 'em all brain damage or something!" he cried. _

"_And this will affect them _how_?" the Irken asked with cool disdain, shooting the human a level-eyed look. Dib started to retort, realized Zim had a point, and promptly changed the subject._

"_Whatever, fine, you want a good cover-story?" he growled. "Okay. What you all just saw was a very involved and elaborate magic trick. Thwacky's eyes weren't really ripped out of his face by a sick, demented alien freak. It was all for show, to practice for the up-coming talent contest, because Thwacky's a pathetic loser like that. Now you're all going to go home with happy thoughts about how very cool that was, re-evaluate yourselves as human beings, and realize you don't want to beat people up after skool anymore. And you," Dib added to Scugg's victim. "You're going to grow some smarts and stay the hell away from people like him." He jerked his head at Scuggs. "Now alla you get out of here. Go on, scat."_

_Dib made shooing gestures and the Thwacky-Lackeys and their thugified victim slowly wandered away._

"_Huh," was all Zim said, though he looked grudgingly impressed. Dib looked down at Scuggs, who was still lying face down in the dirt with his rear-end up in the air, and poked him with a booted toe. _

"_What do we do about him?" he asked. Zim waved dismissively._

"_The eyes I...eh, _equipped_ him with will erase all memories of the last few hours. He will never notice the difference."_

_Dib noticed with a twist of his gut that Zim had already crushed Scugg's real eyes into the dirt beneath his shoe. He looked at the memory-deleter still clutched in the Irkens claws, and his brows furrowed in irritation._

"_Is that thing the reason nobody believes me about you?" he asked, his earlier dismay leaking through. "Because you've been erasing their minds, or something?"_

"_It _would_ come in handy for something like that, wouldn't it?" Zim said, a slow smirk zipping across his face. Dib narrowed his eyes, unaware that his hands were clenching into fists. He took in a deep breath, and resigned himself to the long and difficult campaign of somehow stealing that infernal thing and using it to erase Zim's mind of ever having created it. But not right now. There was something else he needed to ask._

"_Okay, you wanna tell me what the hell all that stuff you just said was about?" he wanted to know, glaring accusingly at the alien. "What was that crack about me being yours? Because I certainly don't remember agreeing to be your little pet, or whatever it is going on in your stupid...sick...head..."_

_He trailed off there because a ghastly grin had begun to curl up in Zim's mouth, and a horrible thought suddenly struck him._

"_Zim, have you ever flashed me with that thing before?" he demanded angrily. Zim scoffed._

"_I don't know what you're talking about, Dib-stink," he replied, still smirking slightly._

"_I'm serious, you spindly little insect!" Dib shouted. "Did you flashy-thing me?"_

"_Of course not," the Irken snorted with a roll of his eyes. _

"_You did! I don't __**believe**__ you!" Dib howled, his face flushing with indignant rage, trying to remember if he'd ever seen such a thing before...but of course he wouldn't. So he tried to recall any blank spots, clutching at his hair, and shuddering at all the things Zim might have done without his even knowing—and then he gasped when Zim seized a hold of his hair-scythe and yanked him forward sharply, until their faces were almost touching. Dib shut his mouth with a snap and glared into Zim's false eyes._

"_I have not erased any of your memories, worm-baby, so stop having the hysterics," Zim told him fiercely. "I will not flash you because I want you to remember every horrible experience, every failure, and every _moment_ of anguish at the hands of _Zim_. And you ARE mine. You are Irken Property, Dib-thing, and you have been for quite some time."_

"_I AM __**NOT**__—!"_

"_The flags I planted all over your insides prove my claim to you," Zim continued, still with that self-smug smile-smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You are MINE to fight and mangle and strike and __**no one else's**__! Set your filthy eyes on another foe again, and I'll make sure you end up just as eyeless as Thwacky!"_

"_This is all because of a few flags you put in me back in elementary?" Dib sputtered in angry disbelief, thinking back to the time the alien had shrunk himself, infiltrated his guts and tried to destroy his brain. "I'd be flattered if I wasn't so amazed at your utter stupidity. You __**don't **__own me, Zim, and I'll do whatever the hell I want, thank you very much."_

"_Oh, yeah?" Zim smirked, his tongue darting out through his zipper-teeth to flick at the purpling bruise on Dib's cheek. "Do you have a __**flag**__?" _

.xXx.

I am Zim. I am Zim. _I am Zim. I am Zim._ **I am Zim. I am Zim.** _**I am Zim. I am Zim. I AM ZIM.**_

_**I...AM...ZIM.**_

Zim repeated the mantra in his head, chanting it over and over to himself, his only defense against the overwhelming empty **blackness **that filled his head like static. He came back to himself slowly, crawling up from some deep, dark pit in the depths of his subconscious. His spooch was twisting with horror and fury, because he knew there was something _else _there with him, inside his own brain. It was familiar, somehow, but it kept his thoughts from finding the answer. He had no idea where it had come from—it had just suddenly ripped open his mind, knocked him from the driver's seat, and hijacked his body. It was crushing in from all sides, shoving his face into long-forgotten memories and forcing him to look, even as he tried uselessly to turn away.

There were pieces of himself missing. Huge chunks of memory, entire emotions, gaping holes punched through the fabric of his jittery soul. He knew the black thing had taken them, held them as hostages, and he could do nothing to stop it. Because those pieces wanted this, yearned for the death of Earth, the death of Dib, an end to everything, and they didn't care how they got it. It was through these parts of himself that the black thing took control, and burned them to charcoal at the force of its possession.

But those pieces of himself the black thing had left behind—they saw and heard everything. But his body wouldn't obey him no matter how much he screamed at it, helpless to make a move within his own head. He could only watch, howling as his world fell to pieces all around him, desperately repeating his own name to keep from losing himself entirely. The blackness was pressing down on him, threatening to drag him into an endless oblivion, and Zim fought against it with all that he had.

_'Stop it!' _Zim wanted to scream at himself, flinching at the awful choking laughter that poured from his mouth. _'Zim commands you to stop!'_

But his body wasn't listening and it leapt at the Dib, and for one wild moment Zim hoped the human would knock him to the ground, put an end to this...and then he smashed the boy's head into the floor and watched with a wrenching sense of horror as Dib's dark red blood slowly spread. Dib's eyes flashed golden, even as they glazed over and dimmed with pain, and he looked up at the Irken—and Zim shrieked with rage at the fear he saw. Dib was _never _afraid. Or if he was, he had never shown it to Zim so plainly, with such stark, bone-chilling clarity. He was always so belligerent and stubborn, so dogged and courageous, so fool-hardy and oh, how Zim had longed to see such a look...but...

_'Not like this!' _Zim shrieked angrily, thrashing against the crushing darkness—in vain, in vain. _'Not like this! It's wrong! Everything's **wrong**!'_

That fear was not his, or the startling heartbreak in those golden eyes at the nasty lies spilling from Zim's zipper-teeth. But Dib believed him, and just for a moment, Zim saw his adversary break in his hands. But he was not in control, and this was not Victory. The sight left him reeling, feeling nauseous and empty at the mangled perversion of such a coveted dream. And then he pulled Dib to his feet and shoved the boy away, into the clutching claws of his fellow Irken...and Zim nearly screeched his lungs out at the sight. Dib was HIS—his to touch, his to fight, his to kill—and they had forced his adversary to his knees, and held him down, and made him watch as Zim turned his back. They were interfering, and never in his life had Zim wished to kill another Irken so fervently. Intentionally, without remorse, without mercy.

But he could do nothing as he walked away and set his hand upon the control panel and...

_'NO!'_ Zim cried. _'No, no, no! The Earth is MINE, do you hear me? MINE! Don't touch it, don't touch it! It can't end like this, not like this, not so _**easily**_!'_

But it did. Abruptly the planet was gone, blinking out of existence with hardly a sound, and Zim could only stare in gut-sick silence. This wasn't supposed to happen. After so many years of trying to conquer the insufferable place, it couldn't just be over with so quickly, without a fight or a fuss or a final stand. Surely, after so long a battle, after everything he'd gone through, it could not be so simple as the push of a button. The world could not just go out like a light. It could not be so effortless.

Because the Earth had always fought before. It had fought him with every molecule of its being, with its booby-trapped sun and its water and its germs. But for all his complaining and disdain and hatred of the world, Zim had never come across such a thrilling challenge, such a ridiculously enthralling planet. It was almost as fun as the Dib. And they had been his. They had belonged to him, truly and wholly, as nothing else had in the 160 years he'd been alive. Dib, and the mission, and Earth, and Gir—and with a cracking heart, Zim realized his little robot companion was gone, too. The thought alone burned his eyes with unshed tears, haunting and hurting, and it didn't matter that Gir had been broken. He was loyal, and he was Zim's.

Irkens did not have possessions, were not allowed to keep things—their jobs, their homes, their lives, even their memories could be taken from them at a moment's notice. To most Irken, belongings did not matter. But somehow, they mattered to Zim, and he had lost everything, stolen from him _by his own hands. _It was with that damning thought that the black thing left him, and he fell to his knees, gasping for breath. He clenched his fists, to make sure that he could, not caring that his claws were gouging trenches into his palms. A raw, aching hole had opened up in his chest and was rapidly growing, too much to handle. Distantly, he heard Dib yelling, and turned his head to see the boy being dragged away.

**_'No.' _**The thought was savage and angry and it drove him forcefully to his feet. _'The stink-beast is MINE. He is the last thing I have, and I will not let you take him. I will DIE before you take him.'_

Zim moved towards Dib with a wordless snarl, eyes thin and glinting, his teeth snapping—and stopped when a hand descended gently upon his shoulder. He turned sharply, and Mar's eyes glittered back at him.

**"YOU—!" **Zim roared, and lunged at the Irken. He hit Mar hard enough to knock him to the floor, and his claws wrapped around the smaller's throat, curses spewing through his bared teeth so viciously they left bloody chunks of themselve_s _behind. Mar's foot came up like a piston, driving ruthlessly into Zim's stomach, and hurtling him head over heels into a computer console. Zim landed with a jarring crash, but he rolled to his feet and whirled to face the other Irken, hissing through his teeth. Mar charged first, skittering with agile grace across the floor, and Zim twisted out of the way at the last second. Mar's claws rake across his chest, ripping his shirt and drawing dark green blood. Zim snarled and lashed out with a Pak-leg, firing off a wild laser burst and hitting Mar in the shoulder. The smaller shrieked, twisting with the force if the blow, and used the momentum to throw his foot into a spin-kick that glanced off Zim's forearm. Zim flipped back onto his hands, and kicked up as Mar rushed him again, catching the other Irken a vicious blow beneath his chin. Mar staggered back, shaking his head, his eyes thin and mean and deadly. And then Zim was on top of him, his Pak-legs raining down laser beams and stabbing with lethal accuracy—

But he didn't notice the strange mechanical arm that had emerged from Mar's Pak. It was unlike the usual spider-legs. It was more like a tentacle, prehensile and maneuverable, with a sharp three-fingered claw on the end. The steel arm wrapped like a python around his torso and hauled him into the air before he even knew what was happening, squeezing the breath out of him. And then the claw reached around to open his Pak...

_"What are you doing?"_ Zim shrieked, thrashing and writhing as the claw went rooting into all the wires and circuitry and delicate filmy things that made up his soul. Zim was lowered until he was face-to-face with Mar, who smiled softly, in a friendly and disarming sort of way. It didn't match the coldness in his red eyes, and it made Zim's skin crawl. A spider-leg tried to plant itself in Mar's head, only to get itself ripped off by another of those mechanical arms.

"Well, Zim, I'm sorry I have to do this, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to take your Pak," Mar told him lightly. Zim blinked, staring at the Irken in stunned incomprehension.

"No, you can't take that," he said stupidly, as if it was such an obvious thing and that by pointing it out Mar would actually stop. A leaden feeling had crawled into his squeedly-spooch and was tying all his insides into knots, emitting a deathly chill that froze him solid. "I'm _using_ it!"

"I know, and I do apologize," Mar replied soothingly, his voice honeyed and cloying and false, false, false. "But you can't get something for nothing, you know. You completed your mission, at my behest, Zim. And now I will need something from you in return."

"I didn't agree to—"

"This is not up for discussion," Mar cut him off, his glinting red eyes slowly turning hard. "I _will_ have your Pak, Zim. I simply needed you to complete the mission you were assigned first, and you have done a fantastic job of it. Very good work, soldier."

"No! That wasn't me, you _stole—_"

"Wasn't you? I'm quite sure I saw you destroying that planet, as did about fifty others. Shall I rerun the tapes for you?" Mar asked, a cutting edge hidden beneath his cordial tone.

"I NEVER—"

"No, Zim. You did," Mar smiled icily, and his mechanical arm found the plugs connecting Zim's Pak. The Invader's eyes widened—Mar didn't have the right_—not supposed to_—_**NONONO—**_

Zim screamed when his Pak was ripped out of his spine. Mar hadn't done it correctly, it wasn't supposed to hurt, and Zim knew when he was dropped that it was meant as a crippling blow. At that, Mar had succeeded. Zim lay in a twitching, convulsing heap at Mar's feet, feeling as if his nervous system had just been torn out along with his Pak. One hand opened and closed and opened and closed, his antennae jumped and jerked, and he clenched his teeth against the agony electrifying his mind to ash, his world burning to excruciating ruin. Every single nerve ending was on fire, and his eyes were full of white-noise static as his brain gradually sputtered out.

The other Irken stood in stunned silence, staring in wide-eyed horror at Zim, unable to believe the atrocious brutality of his mutilation and murder. They shrunk away from Mar, antennae lowering in fear of the mad Taller, and sympathy for the fallen Invader. Several began to retch. Such a death was unheard of in Irken society. When an Irken was executed—and this was, indeed, an execution—the Control Brains always wiped an Irken's Pak clean of all data before unplugging them. It was swift, and easy, and painless. Even just a simple disconnection, while dangerous given the time limit, didn't actually hurt. But to invade a Pak and rip it off...it was as if Mar had dismembered one of Zim's limbs with a chainsaw. Only this was a crime was far more heinous. A Pak stored their memories, and the memories of their ancestors. Their bodies were just convenient containers, disposable, and easily repaired or replaced. Their Pak was their soul. To tear one off like that was unspeakable.

Mar tutted at the heaving, dying Irken and turned away, only to come to a stop when Zim reached out and grasped his heel.

"Wh-what...a-ab-about Di...D-Dib?" he choked out, his voice thick with pain. Already his crimson eyes were fading, losing their light as he lay there panting and glaring dimly up at the smaller.

"The boy?" Mar asked, as if he'd forgotten, and glanced in the direction of the holding cells, where the strange Earthling creature had been dragged off to. "Well, I suppose he's mine now."

"N-no," Zim moaned, trying to get up, but he couldn't. Mar shook his hand off with pitiful ease. "Y-you c-can't. Y-you can't. Never...never...never..."

Mar smiled gently, heartlessly, and bent down to rub his fingers along one of Zim's antennae. The Invader shuddered, and tried to jerk his head away, mewling low in his throat. Mar chuckled mildly, closed his hand around the thin black stalk and yanked Zim's head up. To his credit, the Invader bit back a sharp cry of pain, and met Mar's gaze with hate in his eyes.

"I'm going to have _fun_ with your little friend, Zim," Mar hissed, his smile twisting into something monstrous. "There are so many experiments I want to try. His death will be slow and hard and it will hurt. But it won't come for a long time yet. Oh no, it will be _years_ before I tire of him."

"...k-kill you..." Zim murmured, but he couldn't focus, and he couldn't move anymore, and his mind was crumbling into dust. Mar let him slump to the floor, and Zim turned his gaze away so that his last sight would not be Mar's triumphant little smirk. His breath rattled in his throat, and he wondered if he would see Gir again as his eyes slid shut...and everything went black.

.xXx.

Dib Membrane was dragged into a room that was white, austere, and bare. There were no windows, or furniture, and only one door that slid open and closed with a metallic hiss. Monitors covered the far wall, talking quietly to themselves in their whirring way, and filled the room with static.

Standing in the middle of the floor was an operating table. There were horrors that had happened here, he could feel them as strongly as if he were seeing blood drip from the walls, and it filled him with a dread that froze him solid.

**_To be continued..._**

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**Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim. I'd totally make it a ZADR if I did.**

**Yay, I finally updated! I got a little stuck at Zim's scene, which is why it took me a little longer with this one. You better like it, and if you don't, you shall meet my fisty fist of doom. OBEY THE FIST. I bet you thought Dib was the one getting all beaten up in the begging, right? HA, you were wrong! I'm tricksy, tricksy.  
**

**Yes, the mind-eraser-pen Zim had in the flashback was the same device the Men in Black used. Dib's little freak out was also a nod towards the movie. I could totally see him starting an organization like that. You know, once he got over the whole need to expose them and stuff...  
**

**Anyway! There are a couple things mentioned in previous reviews (thanks so much, I've gotten 101 so far!) that I want to address. Yes, the Tallest will reappear, probably within the next few chapters or so. I haven't forgotten them. And Gaz, too. I haven't finished with her, so you get to see what happens with her in the next chappie. I'm really sorry about Gir, though. I'm afraid he got left behind, and I had no choice but to kill him when the world exploded. In the show he seems to enjoy 'sploding, so I don't think he minded too much. Rest in Peace, Gir. **

**As for Zim...well it can go either way, from the looks of things~can't it? So review, or I'll kill him, too :D  
**

**Raha**


	14. Tilting at Windmills

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Fourteen: Tilting at Windmills**

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Dib couldn't remember very much about his mother. He couldn't remember her face, or the color of her eyes, or the way she smelled. But he remembered her hair, long and shiny and the shade of purpling bruises, and he remembered her smile. He could recall being very small, stretching his hands up as high as they would go and laughing as she swept him up in a warm hug, her smile gentle and soft. He would wrap his arms around her neck and bury his face in her hair and be truly content. He couldn't have been more than five or six years old, and he couldn't remember a happier time in his life. And then...

"Your mother's not coming home anymore."

Just like that, she was gone. There wasn't a funeral, so Dib knew she hadn't died. She'd left them, without any explanation, just a note of apology that said she loved them. Membrane was never the same again. He threw himself into his work after that; gone before they woke up in the mornings, and not returning until long after they'd gone to bed. Coming home, being in the same house with children that looked just like her, was too painful to bear. Those first few years, they were lucky if they saw him during the holidays, if at all.

Gaz retreated into herself. She turned bitter and antisocial and resentful. She hardly spoke to anyone, and was content to spend her days locked into a video game, too hurt and too angry to face the reality of her world. But at least she could tell the difference between what was real, and what wasn't. Because, after a while of running from his own reality, the line was fraying for her brother.

It had begun simply enough. He was already shy and awkward around people, and given that his intelligence overshot the other kids' by leaps and bounds, and given that he had just lost his mom, and given that children could be very cruel, Dib didn't have anyone to play with. At recess, while everyone else ran and shouted and pushed each other, Dib was left to quietly sit by himself. Hoping someone might stop and notice him. So, he began to make up his own playmates. But of course, your everyday run-of-the-mill imaginary friend wasn't enough, and it was a rare occurrence that his 'friends' were ever human. They were ghosts, or goblins, or the Loch-Ness monster, or a visitor from beyond the stars. They appeared every time his father was working late again, or his sister ignored him for a video game, or the other children refused to include him. Every time he was left alone, Dib wandered farther and farther beyond the borders of reality, seeking the comfort of his own little world, wanting a place where he could be happy again. After a while he stopped hearing the whispering of the other children, stopped seeing them point at him as he passed, stopped caring altogether.

Eventually, his escape became an obsession, his fantasy blended with reality, and after a while it began to outshine it altogether. Soon, the mundane and the ordinary became boring and tedious, and Dib longed all the more to find the mysterious, the dangerous, and the unique in a world that was fast becoming dull and colorless. Such a wish had him rowing out onto the waters of a still mirror-lake, searching for a sign of some long forgotten beast thrown back from the Jurassic age. Such a wish found him trekking through a lonely forest, on the hunt for creatures only mentioned in fairy tales. Such a wish drove him to explore old abandoned houses, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone Otherworldly.

And most of the time, he was happy. His world of the paranormal was exciting, adventurous, challenging—and it gave him a purpose beyond his otherwise plain, simple little life. But there were times, late at night, when he sat up on the roof and stared up at the stars and _wished—_**with all his heart****—**that the world really was a bigger place. That there really were monsters under the sea and life on other planets and things that crossed from another dimension to go bump in the night. That he wouldn't have to look up from the fantasies he created and realize: _this was it._ The world was the way it was, with it rules and laws and the sciences that explained every bit of unknown magic away, and no amount of pretending otherwise was ever going to change that. In those moments, he'd never yearned for anything so much than for the Things he chased to step out of his mind and into reality. He longed to reach up and wrap his arms around the endless possibility in the heavens above. He wanted it so bad, and the notion that the world could never be _more_ than it was overwhelmed him with heartbreak.

That was why, on a muggy afternoon a week before his tenth birthday, when he was exploring the woods beyond the city borders and he came across a set of tracks that didn't belong to any animal, _but weren't human_, his heart nearly burst. It stayed in his throat as he followed the prints for almost three miles before he finally came upon a sloping, hairy creature that looked like an ape but wasn't...and once he'd found the Thing Dib could do little more than stare in stunned silence, unable to move. The creature had looked up at him with beady intelligent eyes, and Dib remembered wondering if he'd finally just lost his mind. That after having spent so much time trying to catch his own imaginings, his brain had finally gotten sick of tilting at windmills and decided to make them real.

But the thought that he might really have gone crazy was a passing one, and it quickly burned up before the blazing idea that _the paranormal existed_, and such a concept was too overpowering, too irresistible, too ensnaring for Dib to consider anything else. Suddenly, dreams and reality were colliding, and the faded world that through his eyes had paled into washed out water colors was suddenly bright and vibrant and shining. After a while, he didn't even care if he'd really lost it. He didn't care that nobody else ever seemed to see the Things suddenly appearing all over the city. He didn't care that people averted their eyes whenever they saw him in the hopes that he would leave them alone. He didn't care that no one would believe his paranormal ravings. He simply chalked it up to to the fact that everyone else was so mired in their own everyday, mundane, boring lives that they could no longer see past them to look at something unusual or strange or unexplained. That maybe they were just too ignorant, or too scared.

At least, that was what he told himself. At first, he'd only told other people about his findings in an attempt to share with them the wonders that lay beyond what they only saw with their eyes, wanting them to see a realm far beyond anything they could have imagined. To see that there really was magic left in the world, if they would just _look _for it. Maybe he'd also wanted to somehow disprove his father's theories that everything in the universe could be explained, and dispel once and for all the depressing thought that there wasn't a mystery left in the world that couldn't be solved. Such a thing made it all seem so much smaller, somehow. But eventually, all Dib wanted to do was show people he wasn't crazy, despite the fact that sometimes even he wasn't quite sure anymore. It was a nagging worry, one that loomed in the back of his mind and gnawed at his sanity, the thought that maybe he couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what wasn't. That maybe he'd been Dib Quixote, tilting at windmills all along, and he just didn't know it.

Then suddenly in walked Zim, and everything changed. Here was proof—honest to God, solid, inescapable _proof—_that everything wasn't just a dream, that his mind hadn't been lying to him. To see a _real live alien_ waltz right into his classroom killed any lingering doubts he'd had of his sanity for good. Rather, it stabbed them in the heart with a kitchen knife and buried them under six feet of dirt. One look at the small green creature sitting just a few desks away had him nearly leaping into the sky, because that aching wish thumping though his soul was dispelling the last vestiges of uncertainty, and bringing his world into profound focus. Sharp, vivid, intense, and colorful. Just by existing, Zim had brought reality(?) and fantasy(?) together into one, and proven to Dib once and for all that _he wasn't crazy_. And for the first time in his life, Dib felt anchored down in a world at which he had long been adrift at sea.

And for one moment, one small fleeting moment, Dib had wanted nothing more than to be friends.

But soon it became all too apparent that enemies would have to do.

.xXx.

_Most humans spent their entire lives toiling in obscurity. They had their jobs, their families, and hobbies, and most were content with the fact that when they died the world would be no different. Even then, the select few that **were** recognized across the globe—be they actors or sports stars or politicians—had no more purpose outside of their own little world than did everyone else, and in the grand scheme of things they, too, would either be forgotten or become just another name to memorize in a history book. There were very few humans that had the drive to become something more, to step beyond the boundary of their life, to put it at risk even, in order to rise above their station and become something greater. _

_To become something like a hero. _

_Of course there were soldiers, and policemen, and firefighters, and although Dib was not any of those (not yet, at any rate, for the notion to join the police force had not quite presented itself to him) he still counted himself among them. Super-heroes, and for that matter super-villains, did not exist in his world. Or they hadn't until Zim had arrived, and if anything, he was definitely a super-villain. And as Dib was the only one who saw it and therefor was the only one to fight him, he supposed that made him a super-hero. He didn't have any powers, of course, but he figured the uncanny, almost **inhuman** ability to survive against impossible odds had to count for something. Eventually, sooner or later, he would make the world see that, even if they didn't right now. _

_Unfortunately, right now he did not feel much like a hero. More, he felt like a damsel in distress, and in dire need of a rescue. _

_Right now he sat in the corner of a small white room, in which there was a bed and a toilet and nothing else. The walls were thickly padded, and there was a little window in the door so that the doctors could look in and watch him without actually having to come inside. He thought the straight-jacket was a little much, given that the door was double-locked and there were about ten more to bar any attempt at escape, but it was standard issue at the Crazy House For Boys. He'd lost track of how long he'd been there, but he figured it had to have been at least three days by now. _

_Three days of nasty tasteless food. Three days of grown-ups in white lab-coats shaking their heads at him in a sad, condescending way. Three days of listening to the boy in the cell next to him sing Disney Princess songs over...and over...and over. Yesterday it was Sleeping Beauty's 'Once Upon a Dream'. The day before that it had been Cinderella's 'A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes'. Today it was Snow White, and a rendition of 'Someday My Prince Will Come'. _

_It wasn't the fact that he hated that particular song, because he didn't. It wasn't even that the kid had been singing that same song for eight hours straight non-stop. It was the fact that it seemed to run almost parallel with his own morose thoughts that Dib finally found himself shouting at the top of his lungs, "SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY!"_

_Because really, he _did_ feel like a freaking princess, locked in some God forsaken tower, waiting for his stupid knight in shining armor to come set him free. And dammit to hell, he had a sinking feeling he knew who that knight would be. He'd been holding out hope for a while now that it would be Gaz. However, since she'd just gotten her hands on the latest gory video game on the market, somehow he found that highly doubtful, especially given her snarled answer to go do something unpleasant to himself when he'd called her for help. So there he sat, listening to the same song re-sung off-key again and again—and really, if he wasn't crazy before, he should have been by this point—and waiting._

_He **hated** feeling so helpless. He **hated** that no one would believe him. He **hated** that he was in there. But most of all he **hated** that the only way he was getting out was to be rescued at the hands of his mortal enemy. The thought alone made him sick, and 'Some Day My Prince Will Come' was **not**__ helping matters. Maybe if it had been Snow White herself singing, in her cheerful way, it would have been just as bad...but on a different level. But his prison mate made the song sound sad and hopeless, which just sank Dib further into his current mood of self-deprecation until he felt he might melt right into the floor. Idly, his brain meandered in a half-dreaming dazed kind of way, and his eyes stared at nothing in particular, and to anyone outside his door it would seem that he really had lost his mind. _

_Perhaps he had, because he found himself thinking the song was strangely appropriate. If he was going to compare himself to a princess, he could think of none other more fitting than Snow White. With his hair black as ebony and his skin white as snow, he fit the description perfectly. Then what did that make Zim? Certainly not the handsome prince. The Frog Prince, perhaps? Or, better yet, the Wicked Queen with his eyes the color of poisoned apples. No...who was that villain with the crow and green skin...?_

_Maleficent. _

_That was it. Who was more magnificently malicious than malevolent Maleficent? The Mistress of All Evil, who'd swooped in and tried to kill a baby just because she wasn't invited to a Birthday party. Really, Dib couldn't think of a more becoming moniker for Zim, and smiled that such a ludicrous thought would present itself in an insane asylum. _

_In the distance, there was a dull explosion and the building shook. It jarred his wandering mind back into reality, and Dib looked up with resigned expectancy at the door. He hadn't doubted that Zim would come, and found the alien was as punctual as always. Three days was the unspoken agreement after all. If, say, Dib did not show up to class for three days then Zim had every right to march over to his house and demand an explanation. Obviously, he'd done just exactly that, and someone (Gaz, he supposed) had steered the Irken in the right direction. Dib knew Zim would have been thrilled, at first, to learn that he was out of the way—but that never lasted long. He always got bored, and sought the boy out eventually. It was really only a matter of time before__—_

_Zim blasted Dib's door off its hinges. The two-inch slab of metal hit the padded wall with a resounding THUD about a foot from where Dib was sitting. The boy jumped badly, with an undignified squeak. He swallowed it quickly—though not before Zim caught it and smirked—before turning a black glare on the alien._

"_Well, it took you long enough," he said snidely. His 'knight' scoffed and marched into the room, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulders and casting a cursory glance around the cell. He curled his lip in disgust, and turned scornful eyes upon Dib. _

"_I trust you are doing well, Dib-monkey?" he sneered. Dib was still sitting on the floor and was forced to glare up at the Invader, who stood with his feet wide and his hands on his hips, the picture of smug superiority. Dib knew very well who had the upper hand here, and Zim wasn't going to let him forget it._

"_I've been better, lizard-face," Dib muttered darkly, refusing to look away first. He couldn't afford to show any weakness, or fear, or the exhaustion that had sunk into his bones—Zim would jump on it in a moment. The Irken just smirked down at him, and saw it anyway in the dark circles under his eyes, and his shaking limbs, and the way his legs were drawn up to his chest. In no way was Dib beaten. More, he was a caged animal poised to strike. But right now he was muzzled and vulnerable and he knew it. Zim could see that in the defiant set of his jaw and the wary look in his eyes, how they had brightened from their usual toffee color to a near gold. _

_Zim crouched down so they were eye-level, his grin sharp and deadly, his gaze slitted with ill-contained delight._

"_I could kill you right now," he said off-handedly, his voice laced with lazy amusement. _

"_Great, then I won't have to listen to Princess Pain-in-the-Ass next door," Dib drawled back as insolently as possible, but he yelped when Zim suddenly grabbed the collar of his straight-jacket and yanked him forward. Abruptly, he found himself on his knees in Zim's arms, completely restrained, and at the Irken's mercy. He stiffened against Zim's chest, his breath catching in his throat, and waited to see what the alien would do. _

"_They've wrapped you up so nicely," Zim murmured in the boy's ear, and ran a gentle claw down his cheek, making Dib flinch. "It would be **so **__easy."_

_Dib tried to yank himself away, tried to get to his feet, but Zim held his upper arms in a punishing grip and gave a low, wicked chuckle when those attempts proved useless. Dib's heart was panicking in his chest and his lungs could only manage quick, short gasps. _

"_Zim," He growled into the Irken's shoulder. "You let go of me or I'll..."_

_Zim slammed Dib up against the wall and met his furious look with a wide zipper-grin. "You'll what, Dib-prisoner?" Four metal spider legs hit the walls on either side of Dib, effectively caging him in._

"_The orderlies..." Dib growled. _

"_Are trying to put out the fires," Zim smirked in answer. "They won't be bothering us, worm-baby."_

_Dib looked into Zim's eyes—the color of poisoned apples, of blood, that shamed the red, red rose—and saw himself reflected in their near-perfect mirror depths. Near-perfect because the image they offered was warped, cast in a crimson hue, as if he had bathed in..._

_**Mirror, mirror on the wall...**_

_**Who is the fairest one of all?**_

_Dib didn't like the way he looked in Zim's eyes. Maybe because he had been listening to badly sung fairy tale songs for the past three days, maybe it was the constant questioning doctors probing at his sanity, or the bad food, or the sleepless nights, but suddenly his brain was tripping and he wasn't sure if the question had been spoken by the boy next door, or if it had come from his own mind. But in those poisoned eyes he saw his own death, bloody and violent and painful, as he'd seen it a thousand times before every time he'd cared to look. And, as a thousand times before, he'd found it impossible to stop himself from chasing it, because despite the danger he needed an answer to the question that had nagged at him since practically the beginning of their bitter rivalry. _

_Who _was_ the fairest one of all? Who would be the first to fall? Who would answer the Reaper's call?_

_And, in the end, whose justice would stand tall?_

_For here was Maleficent, leading him on as (s)he always had, with an apple to bite or a spindle on which he might prick his finger...and eagerly he had always reached for it, just like Sleeping Beauty, just like Snow White. But unlike such unsuspecting victims, Dib knew exactly what he'd wanted to grasp, and in doing so he'd hoped to find a way to finally bring Zim down. In the end, he should have known it would end up like this. He was just disappointed that it would end so soon. _

"_Well then, what are you waiting for?" he asked, slumping back against the wall and gazing up at Zim with bitter resignation. "You won't get a better chance than this."_

_Zim moved forward until he was practically straddling Dib's lap, his grin still wicked and his macabre eyes still mirroring a blood-soaked boy, while he slowly wrapped his arms around Dib's shoulder's. Dib squirmed, his earlier resentment melting into discomfited surprise. _

"_Uhhh, Z-Zim...? Wh-what're you...?"_

_Zim chuckled into Dib's ear, and ran his claws lightly down his back. The human was trying to wriggle away, but pressed up against the wall as he was, he had no where to go. And then suddenly there was movement out of the corner of his eye, of one of the spider leg's wrenching out of the wall and lashing out, a quick _snicker-snack_ of tearing fabric and a flash of pain—_

_Dib fell forward with a sharp cry as Zim abruptly stood, and caught himself with his hands before his face could hit the ground. He sat there for several seconds, breathing deeply and frowning at the stinging (but superficial) scratches gouged into his back. He wondered why they weren't deeper, he wondered why he was free of the restraining straight-jacket, and he wondered why Zim was looking so God-awful smug. He glanced up at Zim, the question in his eyes, and Zim crouched down to grin at him. _

"_That would be too easy, Dib-stink," he drawled lowly. "When you die, it will be a death worthy of Zim." Then he stood and turned to leave, just like that. "Besides, I have a doom laser I've just been dying to test," he called over his shoulder. "I think I might write my name across the state of Texas. But it wouldn't be any fun without your pitiful attempts to stop me."_

_Dib watched him go in a sort of daze, listening to the sound of distant screaming, and his own pounding heart, and the far-off whisper of a wild fire. But other than that, he found that there was silence. The boy next to him had finally stopped singing. Feeling as if his legs had turned to jelly, Dib climbed shakily to his feet and stumbled towards the door. The halls were empty, it was a simple task to find the exit, and soon Dib was outside again. It wasn't until he was almost home that a slow smile spread across his face, and a quiet giggle bubbled up from the depths of his belly. Dib broke out into a run, determined to chase the Irken until the end, because it seemed that Zim wasn't quite ready for it to be over, either. _

_Mirror, mirror, after all. _

.xXx.

Gaz knew her brother was stupid. But it wasn't until that moment that she realized just _how_ stupid he really was. Granted, crashing the Transport Station into the Massive wasn't a bad idea. But everything that followed had been just one colossal mistake after another. Remaining _inside _the Transport Station _while_ it was crashing into the Massive was the first. Flying straight into the heart of the Irken ship and getting themselves surrounded by a veritable army of the little insects was the second. Leaping out of the Spittle Runner guns blazing and announcing said army was under arrest was the third. She figured she could blame Dib's media-induced, testosterone-driven male bravado on that one.

But somehow, despite all his shortcomings and slip-ups and stupidity, Dib always made it through in the end. So Gaz wasn't unduly concerned (or surprised) when he challenged Zim to their usual Epic Battle of Untold Proportions, and settled back to see how it would play out this time. From what she'd seen of Zim's race, they weren't all that intelligent. They'd stolen all their technology from other races, for starters, and when it really came down to it they preferred to take their enemies out from afar rather than engage in close combat. Zim seemed the only one that was an exception, but because this was _Zim_ she didn't put too much stock into it. It seemed that even by Irken standards Zim was idiotically insane. So she wasn't all that worried about the numerous aliens now swarming around her ship. There was a Vortian pistol hidden under her seat, which was soon hidden in her pocket as she watched the fight. She had to admit, Dib was pretty good. Years of fighting Zim had honed his muscle and skill, and given the ninjutsu and boxing classes he'd enrolled in, he was certainly a force to be reckoned with now.

But he was still human, and that only went so far. For instance, even Dib couldn't shake off a blow to the head, especially when Zim slammed into him hard enough to fell a charging rhino and drove the boy's skull into the floor with a resounding _crack!_ They'd gotten this violent before, so Gaz thought nothing of it and was just about to climb out of the Spittle Runner to lend her moronic brother a hand when Zim suddenly shoved Dib into the crowd of Irkens and _walked away._

That's when it all went wrong. In all the years she'd known them, neither had ever just walked away from a fight before, or let someone else do the fighting. Neither would have been satisfied letting someone else take the other down, or letting someone else even _help_ take the other down because then they'd have to share the credit. No, something was definitely off. It was then that Gaz noticed Zim's eyes, the way they had gone all flat and dead and empty, and she noticed how jerky his movements had become. Gaz hit a button and the protective shield of the Spittle Runner whooshed open. She jumped down, shot a black-eyed glare at the little Irkens closest to her, and began to move towards her brother. The aliens raised their guns, but they seemed too afraid to do much else.

And then...

"_Burn them all."_

The Earth was gone. There was no explosion, no light-show of death-lasers, no debris of shattered rock. Just a flash, and a dull thud, and then nothing where her planet should have been. It had been so quick, so simple, and so easy that Gaz couldn't really get her head around it. This wasn't right. This wasn't how things should have gone. Despite everything, Dib always came through in the end because dammit, Zim was too much of an idiot to actually _succeed_. But succeed he had, and a large part of Gaz found that she didn't particularly care. She still had her GameSlave2, and it wasn't like she'd had any friends to mourn. It was good riddance to a lot of people she hadn't liked (which basically consisted of all of them). All she'd really had was her work, and given that her games weren't really selling because everyone was too scared to buy them wasn't a huge loss. But...

She hadn't beaten Ganon yet in _Twilight Princess. _There wasn't a Bloaty's anymore for Pizza Day. And she wasn't ever going to see her dad again.

Gaz didn't hear her brother screaming. She didn't see him being dragged from the room, a dozen mechanical limbs clamped round his torso. She didn't hear herself screaming. She didn't notice the Irkens backing away from her in abject terror. She didn't notice that those who couldn't move fast enough ended up shrieking about the numerous holes their bodies were suddenly riddled with. She didn't feel the gun in her hand. All she saw was Zim, and all she knew was that she was going to kill him, kill him, kill him dead.

She didn't expect someone to beat her to it. But it was with a certain satisfaction that she watched the strange Irken rip Zim's Pak off—only to feel her stomach shrivel when Zim let out a bone-chilling cry. Silently, she looked on as the proud creature of her childhood fell to his knees, grasping the hem of the strange Irken's shirt in his hands, before he crumpled gasping to the floor. She swallowed and swept a hand through her hair. Everything was all wrong...

Gaz shook her head and walked up to the strange Irken, regarded him with a cold gray-eyed glare, not noticing the green blood that splattered her clothes. He linked his hands behind his back, one still gripping a sparking metal coil in Zim's Pak, and considered her evenly. He was taller than most of the Irkens aboard the Massive, and there was a presence about him, in his bloody red eyes. Sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, pompous, self-righteous. All these words Gaz could use to describe the being standing before her, looking down his non-existent nose at her like a school teacher reprimanding a disobedient student. She thought about Zim's empty eyes, and it suddenly occurred to her that maybe Zim was still an idiot, after all.

"Who are you?" she asked. The alien's gaze was hard, but that wasn't what gave him away. It was the antennae. In a sense, the Irkens were like wolves, who held their tails erect and pushed their ears forward to appear larger, more aggressive. Right now his antennae were up, perked as high as they would go, in an instinctual attempt to appear taller, because despite the authoritative power he wore draped across his shoulders like a cloak, this patrician creature was acutely afraid of her. She wasn't even pointing her gun at him. Not yet, at any rate.

"My name is Mar," the alien replied stiffly. "And you are...?"

"Gaz," she replied stonily. "That was my planet."

Mar glanced out the window to where Earth was supposed to be. Earth, and _Twilight Princess_, and Pizza Day, and her father...

"Hm, yes," he said calmly. "Yes, that is a shame. But I'm afraid that the completion of Zim's mission on this mission was rather important. His Pak was quite useless otherwise—nothing new could be started while he still had his objective in mind. I needed a clean slate, you see."

"For what?" Gaz asked. Something monstrous was stirring in her gut, all black tentacles and teeth, and it was slowly crawling up her spine to rub against her heart, like some nightmarish cat from the Ninth circle of Hell. Then it was pushing it's snout up her throat and peeking out through her eyes and Mar must have seen it because suddenly he was taking a step back.

"The revolution," he replied coolly, because he wanted to or because the fear was making him she couldn't be sure. "Zim is a virus. A potent one, the only one to confound the Control Brains. I managed to procure a small strain of it from an earlier incident some years ago, but without the Pak it originated from my bid for power was limited. My apologies about your planet, but I really had no other choice."

"So it's your fault, then," Gaz said, and lifted the gun to aim it right between the Irken's eyes. "I'm going to take your Pak apart once I've blown a hole through your brain. Any last words?"

"Just what do you expect to accomplish?" the Irken asked, smiling politely. He gestured towards the horde of Irken milling behind her, too frightened right now to approach, but they would swarm her in an instant if given the signal. "You're surrounded on all fronts, with no hope of escape. Perhaps a trade is in order?"

"I want my brother."

"No, I'm afraid I can't release him," Mar replied, shaking his head. "He's far too interesting a specimen. As are you, but a little too dangerous to keep on board, I think. You can shoot me, but you won't get much further than that before my soldiers tear you apart. I doubt even you could hold out against them for long, whatever you are. So, I will let you live, and in return you get off of my ship. I'll even let you take _this_ with you." He kicked Zim's body towards her, and the Irken let out a soft groan. Not quite dead yet, then. Gaz regarded Mar levelly, and then glanced back over her shoulder at the bristling lasers pointed at her head. Not just in the hands of those Irken still able to hold a gun, but sprouting from the walls and the ceiling and even the floor.

How inconvenient. But Mar was right. He was also being cautious. He seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what would happen if he attacked her now. It was for that reason that he would not attempt to capture her, either. Which made him smart, much smarter than she would have given him credit for, because he also wasn't asking her to join him, in accordance to some villainous cliche. Or maybe that was just Irken arrogance. In a word, he wanted her off his ship as soon as possible, and the quickest way to that end was to let her leave.

"This isn't over," Gaz told him, though there was no particular malice in the statement. It was simple fact, and she stated it as thus. Mar was going to die, there was no other way around it, and it was galling that she wouldn't be able to carry out such an act right now. Unfortunately, even she had her limits, and death by lasers was one of them.

"Of that I have no doubt," Mar smiled. "I look forward to seeing you again, Gaz."

Gaz met his gaze and nodded. He wasn't sure how to handle her right now, which was why he was letting her go. But he also knew that she'd come back to finish what had been started, and he was confident that at that time, he would be ready. Sighing, Gaz shouldered Zim and trudged back towards the Spittle Runner. She doubted he would last much longer without his Pak, but she'd never hear the end of it from Dib if she didn't at least do that much. Besides, she was of a mind to have some words with Zim, if he lived.

She would have also liked to beat Ganon, and try the new flavor Pizza at Bloaty's, and see the Professor one more time...But she supposed she would just have to spend her time now devising a way to save her stupid, idiotic, big-headed brother.

.xXx.

Oooooh, look at all the pretty pink ships. See how they dance and sparkle! Watch them chase each other across the sky. Watch all the people run and scream and point.

What fun! !nuf tahW

_Come play with us,_ they said. _Come cha-cha with us into glittery oblivion. _

Gir gaped up at the sky and squealed in delight as another Irken ship went shrieking over the house. He laughed as the neighbors tumbled out of their houses and ran wailing down the street. He ran along beside them, getting himself all tangled up in their ankles and giggling when

they. . .

. . .went

skidding. . .

. . .along

. . .the

asphalt. . .

thinking it was all such a great game. He _oooh'd_ and _ahhh'd_ up at the Irken Armada, and tottered back to the house, searching for his master. Because, _oh, Master had to come and see this!_ So Gir wandered through all the empty rooms, calling for Zim, so he could show him all the shiny big battle cruisers. _Look, Victory! _he laughed.

_V_

_I_

_C_

_T_

_O_

_R_

_Y_

_'_

_S_

_H_

_E_

_R_

_E_

_!_

But Zim wasn't anywhere, no matter where he looked, and finally Gir stood before the door and tried to remember why he'd **s**t**a**pl**e**d it s**h**ut. Then, Oh, yeaaaaah. That's right. Zim had left to go talk to the big, scary tall Irkens. Well, that explained why he wasn't in the base—oh, look, a squirrel!

**FOCUS!**

Master had to see this, it'd make him so _happy! _Gir was determined that Zim got to witness first hand as the Armada destroyed Earth, he'd been waiting so long...

"But it would make puppy-boy so sad..." Gir muttered to himself. And when the Earth was gone, where would he get his toast?

Who would sing...

_Ma**r**y ha**d** a li**t**tl**e** la**m**b_

_**l**ittl**e** l**a**mb_

_l**it**tle lam**b**_

_wh**o**se fl**e**ec**e** w**a**s w**h**it**e** a**s**_

...snow. Where\

/would

the\

/waffles

go?

**daFfy**

**Insane**

**braiNsick**

**luDicrous**

**cra_Z_y**

**dIsturbed**

**Mad**

**I Love **_Find_** That Show . wohS tahT **_Zim_** evoL I**

**Maladjusted**

**unhInged**

**unZipped**

**Demented**

**Nutty**

**lunatIc**

**Fruitcake**

stop, **go**! stop, **go**! a_nd ro_**_W_** and_ row_

t**H**e ripping **bE**a**m** went k_ri_**_c_**_k_e**R**-kra_c_**k**!

he danc**E**d it _down_ and **with** a _clown_

he w**en**t **S**pel_un_kin**g** back.

`t**w**a**s f**ro**th**y, and the _slippy_ tr**o**bes

did g_naw_ and g_ni_**_M_**ble** in the **_b_**_A_**_se__:_

all _flim_**S**y were **T**he _a_s**t**ro_g_l**o**b**E**_s_,

an**d** the _foam_ **R**ats out**grace**.

"I gotta find Master!" Gir cried, slamming his head against the wall, _hand in hand in hand in hand in hand in hand in hand..._before the booster jets popped out of his back and he jumped aboard the astral train and waved goodbye to the cow about to lep over the moon. Beneath him the squishy little Earth-people screamed, and the world trembled, and just as he burned out of the atmosphere and clanged off the hull of a Viral Tank there was a flash of light and the planet disappeared.

About five seconds later, or an hour, or twenty-six-and-a-half minutes, he couldn't really tell...but while he was playing pinball with the other Irken ships, he hit a Spittle Runner with a rather nice crunching sound—_I love those breaking noises—_and greeted the puppy-boy's sister-unit and his Master's unresponsive body with a squealing-shrieky, "HI, BABY!"

"I thought you exploded?" Gaz asked. She sounded kind of disappointed.

"I knooow~I wanted to," Gir replied. He sounded equally disappointed. "Awww, Master's sleeping! Isn't he so _cuuuute~"_

Gaz looked over. Next to her, Zim slumped in his seat with his head lolling to the side, drooling slightly. From his back sprouted several thick cables, each one hooked into the Spittle Runner somewhere, which seemed only capable of keeping him alive (barely), and not much else.

"I dunno. Come on," Gaz huffed. "Latch onto the ship. We've got a ways to go before we find another civilized planet. And no singing!"

"Okie-dokie!" Gir chirped, and immediately launched into the first verse of the doom song.

_...i love that show..._

_**To be continued...**_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim or anything I have referenced herein, mainly Disney Princesses. I repeat, I OWN NOTHING!**

**Ha! You thought I actually killed Gir didn't you? Well, the joke's on you, pal. As if I'd kill a main character off-screen, and especially one with which I can have so much fun. No, when I kill someone, I'm gonna make you _watch_ (insert maniacal laughter here). But yeah, I tried to demonstrate Gir's insanity in this chappie. I hope I succeeded. In fact, it seems most of the chapter was about craziness, which was the reason for the title.**

**And huzzah, I think I've gotten most of the ZaDr cliches out of my system. Let's see, I covered the Rain Scene, the Dib Gets Beaten Up (but not really) scene, and the Dib Gets Rescued From The Crazy House (sort of...?) scene. I have a plan as to when they're going to like each other. I really do. But then I keep having too much fun with them hating each other (kinda...?), so I really have no idea. It'll prolly get started in the next chapter or so, though you're not going to see REAL zadr for a while. Sorry. I'm enjoying myself with this far too much.**

**So, review, and inspire me to write more!**

**Raha**


	15. Petty Useless Arguments

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Fifteen: Petty Useless Arguments**

* * *

_Dib was on his hands and knees in his closet when Zim used his Pak-legs to climb silently in through the window. The Irken came to stand in the middle of the room, and cast a disdainful eye upon Dib's posterior before it swept over to the bed, and the half-filled travel trunk lying next to the pillow. His bottom lip jutted and he crossed his arms, canting a hip._

"_Dib-stink!" he barked. Dib yelped sharply and jumped about a foot in the air, banging his head on an upper shelf, before he scrabbled backwards and snapped his head around to stare up at Zim with wide-eyed surprise. _

"_Z-Zim!" he squeaked. "Wha-what the hell are you doing here?"_

"_What are _you_ doing here?" Zim demanded, with his usual cock-eyed glare. Dib glanced around in confusion, his brows quirking up in inquiry. _

"_...I live here," he said finally, gave Zim a dryly hooded look, and turned back to pull more clothes out of his drawers, shaking his head in exasperation. _

"_And what were you doing yesterday?" Zim growled. "You were supposed to meet me." Dib looked at the ceiling and ran a hand through his hair, sighing. _

"_Look," he said over his shoulder. "It wasn't my fault, okay?"_

"_Irrelevant!" the Irken retorted. "We had plans yesterday, to which you were absent. I worked for _two days_ on that army of robot chihuahuas, and once I'd finally readied them to invade the mall-thingie, _you_ weren't there." _

"_It was my dad!" Dib cried, throwing his hands in the air. "What was I supposed to do?"_

"_Dib-thing, there is no point in destroying this filthy, pathetic mud ball if I do not have an adversary—as incompetent as you are—to make it at least mildly interesting," Zim continued snappishly, and stepped closer. "Explain, dirt-child."_

"_Um...listen, my dad...he's making me go to summer camp," Dib replied sullenly, his shoulders slumping a little, and he dropped his gaze. Zim was quiet for a few minutes, trying to figure out a way to pretend that he knew what Dib was talking about. Dib rolled his eyes. _

"_My dad thinks if I socialize I might become less insane, or something," he tried explaining. "Honestly, I think sweating it out in some smelly old cabin out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a bunch of screaming kids, with no Internet or decent showers might make me crazier, but who am I to judge—"_

"_Yes, yes, that's magical, Dib-monster," Zim interrupted dismissively, and waved his hand as if to shoo off Dib's ranting. "How long will you be at this...'camp'?"_

_Dib hesitated a moment, and busied his hands with folding a shirt. "Um...it's supposed to last for about...two weeks," he muttered eventually, reluctant because he knew how Zim was going to react. He was right. Zim let out an ungodly shriek, and Dib winced._

"_Two weeks?" Zim repeated. "Two weeks!" He howled again, picked up the closest object within reach—which happened to be Dib's new UFO alarm clock—and hurled it at the boy's head. Dib ducked, and the clock smashed into several pieces against the wall. _

"_Zim, calm down!" he cried. "It's only a couple of weeks, I'll be back before you know it!" He threw his arms over his head to defend himself against the various other things Zim chucked at him. _

"_And what on Irk am I supposed to do until then?" Zim snarled furiously. Dib gave Zim a helpless look and shook his head. If he was honest with himself, he knew he should have been more worried about it than he was. There was no telling what Zim might get up to, what damage he might cause if Dib wasn't around to stop him. However, Dib had stumbled upon a rather interesting revelation some years ago, when he was thirteen and had lost his faith. _

_He wasn't surprised it had happened, really. After constantly hearing he was crazy from everyone he knew ranging from classmates to his father to Gaz (who knew very well Zim was an alien and just called him crazy to be mean), he'd finally gotten sick of the whole thing. He'd ditched his passion for the paranormal, abandoned Zim, and decided to study 'real science' with his father. Three weeks later, he found that real science bored him to tears. The first thing he'd done was search out Zim. But when he'd kicked the alien's door in, found Zim sprawled across the couch under a mountain of snack wrappers, and discovered he'd been there for the better of part of those three weeks(from a rather desperate Gir, who asked quite plaintively for his couch back) he'd realized something._

_Dib hadn't gotten bored just because he wasn't interested in real science. Dib had gotten bored because he'd lost his drive, and the one fueling that was Zim. It was always Zim. The Irken gave his life a purpose, some meaning. As strange as it was, as loathe as he was to admit it...he needed Zim. And even stranger, it appeared that Zim needed him, too. The Invader had lost all ambition without Dib there to challenge him, and while it had occurred to Dib that if he stopped trying to fight Zim the alien might just give up it on his own out of sheer ennui, he found that battling Zim was way too much fun. He knew it when Zim had leapt to his feet, his dull eyes suddenly sparking to life. He knew it when they'd exchanged their customary taunts, already grinning like maniacs. He knew it as he chased Zim down the street, both laughingly calling out the same old threats and insults. _

_A promise passed between them that day. One that swore they would keep on fighting, forever if need be, until the very end. _

"_Dib-stink? Hello?" _

_Dib blinked and jerked back from the Irken hand waving in front of his face. He glanced up and found that Zim was looking a little more than put out.  
_

"_I was thinking," he said, and huffed. "There isn't a lot I can do about it. Camp starts tomorrow, and I've got a lot of packing to do. Besides...two weeks is plenty of time for you to come up with something really big, right?"_

_Zim considered that for a moment and nodded. He didn't look happy, but he looked less displeased than he had five seconds ago. _

"_Well, while I'm at camp you set up the most diabolical scheme you can think of and when I get back we'll have the most colossal fight in the history of fights," Dib said. "That sound reasonable?"_

_Zim regarded him expressionlessly, his bottom lip jutting in thought, his hands folded behind his back. _

"_Yes," he said at length. "That is acceptable."_

.xXx.

Dib's cell was the sort of place where souls were taken to die. For one thing, it didn't have much in regards to décor. No bed, no furniture, not even a toilet. It was small and cramped, four feet by four feet wide and another four feet high, forcing him to either curl up or crouch down. Even worse, there weren't any walls to lean against, either. It was just a cubical skeleton of cables and metal-work that projected a light blue force-field on all sides, one that would make anyone who so much as tried to put a toe outside feel as if every nerve ending in their body had simultaneously exploded. Dib knew this because one of the guards took the extra time to gleefully explain every gruesome little detail of the horrible, agonizing torture that awaited him should he attempt to escape.

He couldn't help a sharp yelp as his carcass was roughly dumped inside, bolts of agony jolting all the way up his screaming spine, and he watched through a fog of swirling, blurry colors as the guards sneered at him before marching away. A low, hoarse sob stuck in his throat, and Dib could do little more than curl up his side and hold his knees, too worn out to do much else.

He was hurting, and he was hurting a lot. Every single fibrous nerve was pounding a splintered bone-deep ache right through his soul. Tendrils burrowed into his mind like worms, he felt the oozing gouges dug out of his back, and the _things_ displacing his insides. He was sharply aware of the Pak, and the mere thought if it sent a gush of sour pre-vomit saliva coursing into his mouth. He swallowed it down, listening with quiet horror at the noises the Pak made when it moved in his brain. It was still making its final adjustments, screwing itself into his organs and rewiring all his delicate squishy parts. He wanted to rip it off. He wouldn't have cared if he happened to pull his spine out with it, as long as it was gone, but he couldn't because his guts had been scooped out and replaced with lead (slowly seeping poison into his veins) and he could barely move.

How had things gone so _wrong_? Suddenly the universe had tipped on its axis, and Dib had to block his mind from thinking about the creature over which he had obsessed for so long, of all the things that were and could have been...But the thoughts crawled in anyway, and spread like maggots across a corpse, dropping little reels of film and playing old movies in his head. It left burning holes in his pride, an anxious bleeding in his brain, and Dib asked himself—over and over again—how he could have been so fucking_ stupid_.

What had he expected to accomplish? After he'd breached the Massive's hull and beaten Zim, had he really thought the Armada would just...what? Turn around and leave? What an idiotic idea. How childish could you _get_?

_'...But what else could I have done?' _a stray thought wanted to know. '_I'm just one person, how could I have beaten the Armada on my own?'_

Yet...that's exactly what he'd tried to do, because no matter what happened, he'd always managed to win in the end—or at the very least kept the world safe for another day. But that was back when it had been just Zim. After a decade, the human race still knew nothing of the sacrifices he'd made, made no effort to protect itself against the threat of invasion, offered not a scrap of help or encouragement. After a while he'd stopped trying to convince everyone, not without proof at any rate, and Zim was extremely careful not to slip up. So, in the end, it was just Dib, too. For that, a burning black tentacle uncoiled in his gut and reached up to wrap around the stem of his brain. It was the part of him that sneered with vindictive scorn at the rest of humanity for failing to listen, the part of him that hated his own kind with searing disdain for their pitiful inaction, the part of him that whispered _'I told you so.'_

Thoughts like that would have made Dib sick at himself, a few years ago. Now he just felt numb, and the majority of his parts didn't really care that he was pretty much an endangered species. They hadn't listened, and it was their own stupid fault that they were dead.

No, the thing eating his mind was the shame of failure. The thing tearing his insides was not knowing if Gaz was okay. The thing breaking his heart was the image of his own father, and with a strangled sound Dib realized the Professor was as dead as the rest of them. Without even a body to bury, or the soil in which to bury him. Dib's breath hitched, and hitched again, his chest constricting with the effort of trying not to cry. Only that hurt even more because of the weeping wounds lancing through his back, and the tears were coming fast and hot anyway, and suddenly he was gasping into the floor because his dad was dead, and his home was gone, and he had no idea what had happened to his sister, and it was_ all Zim's fault._

He shouldn't have been surprised. He'd known—_he'd known—_since day one, that Zim's mission was to destroy the world, or conquer it and enslave the human race. He just hadn't expected it to happen. Dib had always been there to ruin every plan the Irken made, and in return the alien made sure he could never collect a scrap of evidence, and yet...it sometimes felt as if they'd both been hoping to lose, even as they fought to win. Because that meant there would still be a fight left tomorrow, another argument, another blood-thrilling adventure...one more day. There was an odd gratification in such fervid detestation, and while they were trapped in a standoff, they were free to keep plotting and hating and _living_.

And deeper still, within that, there was something else that was all tangled up and buried under years of bitter rivalry. In spite of the fact that Dib needed to expose Zim to be accepted by his people, and Zim needed to defeat Dib to be accepted by _his_ people, somehow they'd found acceptance in each other. And maybe Dib had thought that made them friends...or at least friendly enemies. Or maybe that was just because he didn't know what a real friend was, given that he'd never had any—as in all things, Zim was the only one. Then again, maybe 'friend' wasn't the right word, since there were so many other things they were to each other, and all of them had become just as important.

Somehow, Dib had not expected Zim to bring it all to an end so easily, and the fact that he had made Dib's heart _ache_.

"Hey, whenever you're done crying, you mind telling me what's been going on?"

Dib startled and looked up, his thoughts scattering like cockroaches in the light. The voice had come from the holding cell directly across from his. Slowly, he started pushing himself up on his elbows, twisting his head in that direction, and for a moment his tongue was too busy holding back the gasping cry that had started in his throat from the pain of moving even that much. After a while of trying to get up, he lay back down in weary defeat. His glasses had not been returned, so he wouldn't have been able to see much anyway.

"...Sorry," he murmured at length, his voice hoarse and cracked.

"Yeah, you just wait till you've been here a while," his prison-mate replied sourly. "I've been locked up for _days_. I haven't talked to anyone, and the guards won't tell me a thing. Me! Can you _believe_ it?"

"I guess not," Dib muttered, with a half-formed shrug. The voice was familiar somehow, but right now Dib was too drained to care.

"So do you know what happened?" the voice asked. "I thought I heard some kind of explosion earlier."

"Uh, yeah...I sort of...crashed a Transport Station into the ship," Dib replied.

"You _what_?" the voice said, rising an octave or two in disbelief. "And they haven't killed you yet?"

"Well, they did blow up my planet..." Dib said quietly, and scrubbed a hand across his eyes when they began to sting again.

"Ah. I guess they've decided to perform a bunch of nasty experiments on you, then," the voice said callously, and Dib thought he saw it wave a stick-like hand in dismissal, but his vision was too blurry to really tell. Then the voice let out a heavy sigh, and the figure seemed to slump in on itself. Squinting, Dib thought he saw a slash of green where he guessed its head might be.

"Um...are you Irken?" he asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

"Uh, _yeah_," the voice scoffed at him, presumably for stating the obvious. "What are you, blind? Does your species live underground or something? Is that why you're so disgustingly pale?"

"Ah, no, I just...lost my glasses," Dib replied. "I can't see without them."

"Oh. Then that's just pathetic," the Irken informed him, rather snootily. "No _Irken_ would ever need ocular enhancements to see. I'll bet your race is still living in caves. Well, _was_."

"Wow," Dib blinked. "I guess you're all kinda like that, huh?"

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know," Dib continued, with a casual flick of his wrist. "Full of it."

"Ex_cuse_ me?" snapped the Irken indignantly, sounding rather affronted, but there was a confused note suggesting he hadn't really understood what Dib was getting at, and was now trying to figure out what 'it' could be. He had, however, picked up on the tone and figured it was meant to be insulting.

"I'd be more impressed with your stupid technology if you could go ten minutes without it," Dib went on spitefully. "Or if you guys had actually invented any of it on your own, instead of stealing it from other races. Or if it wasn't just a bunch of stupid junky..._junk_."

"Our technology isn't stupid!" the Irken objected, in highly offended tones now.

"Oh, yeah?" Dib snarked back, just to be obstinate. "It's the crappiest crappy crap I've ever seen."

The Irken dissolved into outraged sputtering, and was too mad to form a coherent sentence for several minutes. Finally, it snapped, "Yeah, well, you're _head_ is stupid!" to which Dib promptly let out a barking peal of laughter. It didn't sound right in his ears. It was choking, and foul, and harsh. It bubbled out of him like acid, and filled the chamber with a bitter, biting blackness. Long after the echoes of it had faded into the shadows, the Irken remained very quiet.

"...Who _are_ you?" he asked at length, in a low, cautious voice, as if he was afraid of setting off another borderline-psychotic outburst. The chamber had sunk into an ominous silence, one that had stretched on for so long Dib was almost asleep when he heard the question.

"Dib Membrane," the boy replied thickly. "You?"

"Tallest Purple," the Irken said with haughty grandeur. "But that's Almighty Tallest to _you_."

From where he'd been lying on his side, Dib tilted his head up to get a better look at the Irken crouched uncomfortably in the too-small holding cell across from him, and smirked.

"What's the Tallest doing locked up in here?" he asked, his tone mockingly cloy. "Did the other one finally get tired of you?"

"For your _information_," Purple spat disdainfully. "It was that sonofaglitch _defect_ of an insect, Mar!"

"...Yeah. Me, too," Dib muttered, his gut twisting at the mention of that particular Irken. Purple wrapped his too-thin arms around his knees, his antennae limp and low against his skull, and he let out another grating sigh. A lot of his armor had been removed; the gauntlets on his wrists and his chest-plate, but with the hover-feature in his Pak disabled, along with quite a few other things, he still felt too weighed down. It was just a blessing the rings pinching his waist were still intact; his spine would have a hard time of supporting his top-heavy torso without them.

"So, what are you doing here?" Dib asked, more out of the need to distract himself than from any sort of real interest. As long as he kept talking, he could keep his mind from concentrating on other things. "I thought you were some kind of all powerful ruler?"

"That two-faced, traitorous jerk turned on me," Purple seethed, before his tone soured like old milk and became decidedly whiny. "He tricked the Control Brains somehow, and now they think _he's_ in charge. No one will listen to me! I have no idea where Red is, I'm hungry, the guards are mean to me, and _I really want some donuts_!"

"...I guess that sucks," Dib said dryly, and resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"I hate this horrible, cramped little cell, and now I have to share space with some filthy, pathetic, blind, crybaby alien," Purple went on, more now to himself than anything.

"Gee, thanks." The urge was stronger now, and Dib rolled his eyes this time with extra fervor.

"For Irk's sake! I'm the _Tallest_! I deserve better!" Purple wailed, pounding a fist against the floor.

"Are you done yet?" Dib grumbled, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on.

"I want Red..." Purple mewled pitifully in a small, frightened voice. "He'd know what to do..."

"Well, why isn't he down here with you?" Dib retorted.

"Mar thinks I'm _defective_," Purple gritted in disgust, his tone indicating just how ridiculous he thought the notion was. "Just because I've got purple eyes. Lots of people have purple eyes! It doesn't make them...not good!"

"Huh. Well, if he thinks _you're _defective, I'd love to see what he'd do with someone like Zim," Dib said darkly.

"How do you know about him?" Purple demanded, his antennae perking up. "No...no, wait. The planet that got blown up, it wasn't..."

"...Earth," Dib murmured softly, his voice dull and empty.

"Then what happened to Zim? Is he dead?"

"He's the one that blew it up," Dib qualified, every word leaving a bilesome taste on his tongue.

"Well, that's just great," Purple groused huffily. "If we weren't doomed before, we are now with that crazy-head on the loose."

Dib gave a snort of agreement, but talk of Zim was churning his thoughts again. Long forgotten memories stirred, and the hollow pain sitting in his stomach began to prowl his skull. A burgeoning blackness pushed at the edges of his mind, like some unnameable rabid beast outside the door, trying to get in, whispering vile things.

"Why is your name Purple, anyway?" he asked out of the blue. Anything to distract himself, keep from spiraling down, and he'd pulled the first thing that popped into his head. However, now that he'd said it, his curiosity sat up with interest.

"Huh?" Purple started in bemusement, thrown off by the question.

"I mean, who names somebody Purple?" Dib went on. "Yeah, that's the color of your eyes, but is your race really so unimaginative that they couldn't even come up with something half-way original?"

"Well, what kind of name is Dib?" Purple bristled defensively. "_That's_ a stupid name."

"At least it's not something like Brown," Dib scoffed.

"At least my race is still around to come up with names!" Purple snapped, sneering when Dib stiffened.

"...At least mine didn't lock me a cage without any donuts," he retorted resentfully.

That did it. Purple let out a despairing wail and buried his head in his arms.

"It's...! Not...! Fair...!" he cried between great, heaving sobs. Dib grimaced at himself, wincing at the small part of him that actually felt sorry for this pompous, petulant thing.

"Ah...look, I'm-er-I didn't mean that," Dib tried amending. "That was a low blow. I'm...I'm sure they'll bring you some donuts soon."

"You...you think so?" Purple hiccuped hopefully, looking up at him with large watery eyes.

"Um, yeah," Dib replied. "You know...maybe."

Purple swallowed and nodded, running his hands along shaking antennae. He was accustomed to being pampered, and comfortable, and looked after. It had been a long time since he'd become the Tallest, that even those dark days of being small had faded into a far-off half-forgotten memory. He wasn't used to being treated like this. Locked in a tiny cage, practically starving, frightened, arguing with some lowly slave-drone. The whole unpleasant experience was stressful and upsetting. He'd been so completely care-free for about as far back as he could remember, that he was utterly unable to deal with the situation.

_'I really wish Red was here,'_ he thought, for the six-hundredth-and-twenty-sixth time, according to his Pak. Red had always been better at handling things like this. He looked over and saw that his unusual companion was nearly asleep. He gave a soft snort of scorn, even as his lips pressed with envy. While it was true that most Irkens never slept, the Tallest were the exception. They, at least, could afford the luxury of such blatant laziness, if they so chose. However, as cramped as he was, there was no chance on Irk that he could ever get comfortable enough to shut himself down for a while, not with the risk of brushing up against the walls of his cell at any rate. But sitting in one spot, with nothing to do, hour after hour and no end in sight was driving him up the wall. And if he had to be awake and bored out of his mind, he didn't see why his new prison-mate shouldn't be, too.

.xXx.

After the Pak incident, Dib was left alone to rot in his holding cell. Other than the guards that came to throw nutrition tablets at them every other day or so, Purple was the only other person he saw. And after nearly two weeks, Dib was completely convinced that he _utterly hated_ him. For one thing, Purple complained about everything. He whined about the food being too dry. He moaned about it being tasteless. He accused the floor of being too hard. He bitched about the guards. He criticized Dib for needing to sleep so much.

Which brought Dib to the number two reason why he hated Purple. The former Irken ruler insisted on waking him up every five minutes, and ever since this whole awful experience had begun, Dib had gotten zero sleep. It didn't help that he couldn't stretch out or move around, on top of that he had some pissy alien talking at him every time he closed his eyes. He was beginning to wish that Mar had just killed him, because even without Purple, this place was torture.

For another thing, he always moved in his sleep. The first night he'd kicked out and hit the force-field. He'd woken up to the sensation of his skin burning off, and had screamed himself hoarse for nearly ten minutes before his nerves had calmed down enough to realize he was fine. His body had yet to learn not to move, if he ever did manage to pass out. He couldn't even roll over on his back because of that infernal Pak, or even use bathrooms breaks as an excuse to move around because it made sure his body was using every little thing he ate, and whatever wasn't got burned off in the Pak itself. Even with that, he was losing weight, and after two weeks of not bathing he felt rank. At least it kept his cramping muscles from atrophying.

The first couple of days or so, Dib had snarled at Purple to shut up. Not that it made any difference, really, but it was all Dib could do. But it wasn't too far into the second week that Dib began to give even that up. Purple's constant stream of verbal consciousness was nothing more than white noise at this point, Dib was so good at blocking him out now. He was good at blocking a lot of things out, which was why he ignored the door opening, and the tromp of several pairs of Irken boots, and the fact that they stopped in front of his cell.

"Hello, Dib."

He was paying attention now. He twisted his head around and managed to pull his weight up onto one elbow. His hair was mussed, falling in his eyes, which traveled up and stared out through deep bruise-purple circles. They burned, with hate and exhaustion and the beginnings of sickness.

"Mar," he muttered, too tired to manage something a little more threatening. He dropped his head onto his arm, panting. "What do you want?"

"I've come to inform you that we have reached our destination," Mar replied, folding his hands behind his back and gazing calmly down at Dib. "You're being moved."

"S'bout time..." Dib murmured as the walls of his cell powered down. Irken hands gripped his upper arms and hauled him to his feet. He knew now why he had been starved for the last two weeks. Even if Purple had let him sleep, he would still have been too weak to do anything other than allow himself to be dragged out of the room. Purple was doing a little better than he was, mostly because his body was designed to work with a Pak, but the pampered former-ruler was useless against a couple of Irken guards.

They were pulled down too many hallways to count, and later Dib would only remember the lights passing by overhead. He was shoved into a pod and suddenly the Massive was gone. Or maybe he was the one who was gone. He'd only experienced teleportation once before, and he hadn't liked it then, either. It was as if he were being pricked with a needle, everywhere, all at once. The world became a kaleidoscope, melted, spun, got too bright. Then he was standing in a pod that looked exactly the same, in a room that looked exactly the same, but was completely different. Another guard, one that resembled the first, yanked him out and down another set of hallways which also looked the same. The lights passed overhead, a door slid open, and suddenly he was outside, blinking in the sunlight. Well, sort of. It wasn't his sun, but it was _a _sun. The sky was an overcast violet-gray, which went well with the slate-gray cement under foot and the steel-gray sky-scrapers boiling up out of the ground like the dirt mounds constructed by African termites. There wasn't a tree or a blade of grass in sight. Just an endless expanse of buildings, roads, vacant lots, fences, and florescent lights.

"Where am I?" Dib asked hoarsely—and hit the ground screaming when his guard jabbed him with an electric rod. Pain ripped up his side and set his muscles on fire.

"Talking is prohibited," the guard informed him with bureaucratic apathy. Mar came to stand beside Dib, watching with clinical interest as the boy panted at his feet.

"This is Vort," he said pleasantly, casting an appreciative eye around the city. "Before we enslaved the Vortians, this world was much like yours. Teeming with all kinds of animals, insects, plant-life. We bio-rinsed the planet, paved it over, and built a prison."

"Riveting," Dib coughed venomously. The guard moved toward him, but Mar waved him away.

"It's not just here," he said quietly. "It's the entire planet. So, even if you escape from your cell, the building you're being held in, and manage to get out of the city or even the country...all you'll really have done was move yourself from one part of the prison to another. There is nowhere to run, and there are no ships that will dock here. The only way off is through the teleportation pods, which will now recognize your biological signature. Attempt to use them and they will administer a neuro-electric shock, much like the one you received from the wall of your cell."

Mar nodded towards the guard, which hauled Dib to his feet by the scruff of his neck. Mar began walking again, and Dib was pushed after him, menaced by the threat of more pain if he didn't get going. He staggered, caught himself, and Mar placed a steadying hand on his upper arm. Dib growled and shook him off, his hair standing on end. Mar only smiled, and this time when he grabbed Dib his claws sunk right into the skin.

"It's actually quite fascinating," Mar continued amiably, as if nothing had happened. "It stimulates the pain center in your brain, which tells your nervous system that your entire body is in excruciating agony. Most of our guests can only tolerate a few minutes of it before they die of trauma." He turned to smile pleasantly at Dib. The boy's eyes were darting in their sockets, calculating, noting where the guards were, where the pods were. "My point is, there is no escape from Vort. But...I know you'll try it, anyway."

Dib's eyes cut towards him, spitting venom. Mar regarded him like a favored uncle would a nephew, with a detached, patronizing care. "The sooner you start to cooperate, the easier this will be," Mar told him, and his hand traveled up Dib's arm to wrap around the base of his neck. Hard. "The sooner you learn that, the better, because I can assure you that you will be here for the rest of your life." He laughed quietly. "However long _that_ lasts."

Dib's intestines were twisting around his stomach, and his muscles were tensing, and suddenly he was lunging at Mar with both fists. "Bastard...!" he snarled, only the Irken side-stepped him, and the guard thrust the cattle-prod into his ribs. Dib cried out and crumpled to the ground, wincing as the skin scraped off his palms against the cement. Mar knelt beside him, and ran his fingers through Dib's hair. The boy jerked his head away, hissing. Mar chuckled, seized a fistful of hair and jerked him back.

"We'll be seeing a lot of one another from now on," Mar said with false geniality. "I suggest you try to make friends and play nice, because if you don't, I'm afraid that your stay here will be quite unpleasant."

Dib glared up through a haze of sick fatigue, biting down on the moan that was scratching at his teeth, wanting out. Then there were hands on his arms, his clothes, his sides, dragging him up. He stumbled again, his vision blurred with vertigo nausea. At some point they had moved inside or underground, he couldn't tell, with more hallways and too-bright lights, and then those hands shoved him forward. He felt the tingle of a neutral force-field across his skin, and fell to his knees in his new cell. He glanced back over his shoulder at Mar, whose smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Welcome to Vort, Dib," Mar said, falsely friendly, and Dib's blood froze in his veins. "Get some rest. We'll get to know each other real soon."

**_To be continued..._**

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, or anything else I might reference. Also, the part in the flashback where Dib loses his faith and goes to real science for a while was a reference to an unwritten episode, Mopiness of Doom. You can find the recording of it on YouTube, as well as the script on roomwithamoosedotcom.  
**

**EDIT: I have updated chapter five, The Mutiny of Irken Mar. I felt there wasn't really enough of it, so I beefed it up a little. **

**Wow, guys, sorry I haven't updated in so long. Better than two years, I guess. I would have had this up earlier if my computer didn't suck so hard. The battery is gone, so every time my laptop gets unplugged, it immediately shuts down. I'm also using OpenOffice, which doesn't automatically save. So every time my computer dies, I lose all my work. This has happened multiple times, and it is extremely frustrating. In fact, this chapter was originally going to be the last chapter. I just gave up in writing it for a while after it got deleted so many times. The other reason is I lost my Internet, which kind of makes updating hard. Also, I wanted to post this pretty much right after I wrote it, so if you see any spelling or grammatical mistakes, be sure to mention them and I'll fix them later. **

**Anyway, this is more of a transition chapter. More plot stuff was going to happen, but then Dib ended up arguing with people instead. Oh, well, next chappie you'll get to see more of Vort, or at least the inside of Dib's cell. As for last chapter, WOW. I really didn't expect such a positive reaction to Gir's bit, but apparently you all really liked it. Honestly I was just having a little fun with it, but now I've got at least ten reviews on it, so you guys will definitely see more of Gir's crazy in the future. Did you all find the hidden messages? I think there were only two, and the first one was easy, I underlined the letters you needed to look for. The last one is kind of hard—it's in the jibberish poem, look for the capitalized letters, they spell something out. **

**Until I write again,**

**Raha**


	16. Born of Blood

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Sixteen: Born of Blood  
**

* * *

**WARNING: Contain dark, graphic imagery. May disturb some viewers.**

_Dib wasn't surprised that summer camp had turned out exactly as he thought it would. It was hot, dirty, loud, boring, and full of bugs. Really, before he'd come to Camp Tex-Lake he'd never seen so many creepy-crawlies in his life. They had scorpions, ants, bees, centipedes, hornets, giant grasshoppers, flies, chiggers, clickers, crickets, roaches, spiders, and beetles. Dib had the pleasure of making the close, personal acquaintance of each and every one. In fact, the third night of his stay, someone had left a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich in his sleeping bag, so that when he'd climbed inside he found that it was already occupied by about a thousand or so fire-ants. They were not very keen on sharing and let him know post haste. _

_Then there were the kids. Snotty, bratty, out-doorsy little demons, the lot of them. They were more interested in setting marshmallows on fire and singing rude, nonsensical songs rather than worry about the fact that they were sitting right in the middle of chubacabra country. Unfortunately, there weren't any goats around, which made the likelihood of getting their feet chewed off in the night dangerously high. They didn't listen, of course, and by this time Dib was starting to hope they all lost their toes. Apart from the ant incident, his clothes were regularly stolen while he was in the shower, his bunk was booby-trapped first with buckets of water, and then later with tar and feathers, and his toothbrush somehow ended up in the toilet every morning (forcing him to buy a new one each day because the camp store didn't sell pad-locks for his trunk). On top of that, he had fallen into the lake, the toilets, the mud, poison oak, his breakfast, and finally a camp-fire—none of which were the result of him being clumsy. Rather, that had a lot to do with the other kids' penchant for accidentally-on-purpose tripping him up every chance they got. Dib didn't know what it was about this place, whether it be the air or just the fact that their parents weren't around, but for some reason all the kids were acting like they were starring in a rendition of _Lord of the Flies.

_The camp counselors were no help. They had ridiculous names like Oreo and Surge, and every single one had a chronic case of unmitigated and inexplicable cheeriness. Most of them were in their early twenties, which wasn't nearly mature enough to handle a bunch of adolescent sixteen and seventeen year old boys. Granted, this was a co-ed camp, but the girls were housed in another set of (admittedly much cleaner) cabins on the opposite side of the grounds. Dib woke up once or twice in the middle of the night just in time to catch a few of his bunk-mates sneaking off to spy on the girls in the hopes of catching one with her clothes off. They threatened to dunk his head in the latrine if he told anyone, and since Dib was reluctant to even sit on those things, he decided it would be wiser to just go back to sleep._

_To be fair, the camp itself wasn't that bad. They had all kinds of activities, like swimming, horse-back riding, arts and crafts, softball, and jet-skiing to name a few. It was the system that was screwed up. To make it easier on the counselors, they'd divided the kids up into their cabins based on the activity they chose to participate in, which meant they could only choose one activity. Since there were only a limited number of horses and jet-skis, it was a first-come first-serve basis, which meant the kids that arrived late got stuck with something like Arts and Crafts. Given Dib's luck thus far, he wasn't surprised that he was doomed to make pictures out of macaroni for the next two weeks, watching while the kids in the next cabin over actually had fun. Dib had not arrived late. In a show of paternal concern, his father had signed him up for the least dangerous activity, because he was worried about Dib falling off a pony and breaking his neck. The fact that Dib risked his life battling Zim every day didn't seem to enter into the equation. _

_It might not have been so bad if he'd gotten to participate in some kind of sport. Despite his small stature, he was actually very good at them. But instead, he spent the next two grueling weeks finger-painting with the loser kids and getting laughed at, or worse. By the end of it, he was itching to go back home, and found himself eagerly looking forward to trouncing whatever diabolical plan Zim had concocted while he was gone. _

"_So, how was camp?" his father's assistant asked as Dib climbed into the front seat of a black sedan. Dib glanced up at the man, not disappointed that his father hadn't come to pick him up—he couldn't be let down if he hadn't expected it. His father hadn't dropped him off, either, he'd just sent the hover-screen along. Dib looked down at himself. He was bruised, sun-burned, dirty, itchy, and bitten. There was a nasty rash all along his lower back from the poison oak. The palms of his hands were covered in first degree burns. The counselor hadn't seen him get tripped into a campfire, of course, and accused him of doing it just so he could get out of cleaning-duty. He hadn't. _

"_Fine," he said. The assistant nodded and didn't really care to ask anymore questions after that. Which was okay. Dib didn't really care to answer. A silent two hour ride later, Dib was dumping his trunk in his room and heaving a sigh of relief, glad the whole torturous experience was finally over. He would have to come up with some sort of contingency plan to get out of it next summer if his dad wanted to send him back, but right now he was just happy to be home. He was also happy for working showers, with real hot water (and no bugs to share it with), and spent the next thirty minutes fogging the bathroom mirror while he watched his fingers get all wrinkly. _

_Gaz was sitting in her usual spot on the couch when he came downstairs, still towel-drying his hair. He paused on his way out, his hand on the door knob. She didn't even glance up, too absorbed in sending hordes of piggies to devour evil vampires on her GameSlave2. Her hair fell in her face, and he watched her absently brush it behind her ear. He hadn't really missed her. He'd barely thought of her while at camp, and if he did, it was to resent her for not having to be there with him. But since the whole idea had been to decrazify him, she'd lucked out and gotten to stay at home. He scratched irritably at a sore, scowling, before he turned away without a word. _

"_Get some milk while you're out," Gaz said, without looking up._

"_Yeah, sure," Dib muttered, and shut the door. He shoved his hands in his pockets and slouched down the side-walk. His feet turned automatically towards Zim's house without any sort of prompting from his brain...and the weight that had been sitting in his chest for the past two weeks slowly began to dissipate with each step, until Dib suddenly found himself running. It was an anxious kind of excitement, he thought. Despite how torturous Camp Tex-Lake had been, it was also dreadfully boring, which gave Dib ample time to wonder about what Zim was up to. On the other hand, all that wondering had made him increasingly nervous. There was no telling what Zim might be able to accomplish in two weeks. Something really unpleasant, he was sure. So he was out of breath by the time he darted past the gnomes and pounded on the familiar men's room door. Gir answered after a beat, dressed in his usual green doggy suit, and stared vacantly up at him._

"_Who is youuu?" the robot asked, his tongue flopping as he cocked his head. He didn't look like he recognized the boy, which didn't really surprise Dib in the least. He _had _been gone for quite a while._

"_Dib," he said, unfazed, and so impatient to get past the robot's short term memory and general insanity that he was practically bouncing. "Is Zim here?"_

_Gir had started bouncing with him, giggling gleefully to himself. "I'unno," he sang. "There's piggies on your head!"_

"_That's nice," Dib humored dismissively. "Look, do you know where he is?"_

"_Who's Dib?" Gir asked. _

"_I am," Dib replied, and ran a hand through his hair. "Where is he, Gir?"_

"_Where's who?"_

"_Zim!" Dib cried, throwing his hands up. "I swear, I have no idea why he puts up with you. Where's Zim?"_

"_I'unno," Gir repeated with a shrug, looking up at Dib with wide-eyed mystification. "I's makin' pancakes for brekkast an' I wuz putten mustard in 'em just like Master likes and da dishwasher esploded pancake all over da ceilin' an' Master din't yell at me or kick me or nottin—I's scareded big-headed boy!"_

_Dib stared at Gir for a second, pinched the bridge of his nose, and started to count to ten. "Okay," he sighed finally. "If you don't know where he is, can I just come in and—"_

_Bad move. Gir's eyes flashed red and his voice dipped into gutteral duty-mode. "Intruder!" he shouted. "Prepare to be vaporized!" Dib rolled his eyes. He didn't have time for this. He stuck his hand in his pocket and grabbed the first thing his fingers touched. _

"_Hey, if you let me in I'll give you this awesome shiny new..." he studied the whatever-it-was. "...dead grasshopper." While Dib wondered why he'd been carrying around a dead bug in his pocket, Gir squealed like a five-year-old at Christmas, and snatched the insect out of his hand. His eyes blinked back to their normal blue, and Gir plopped down right there in the door way and began to play with the grasshopper's wings. Dib watched him bend the legs and then slowly pull them off one by one in abject fascination before he stepped over the robot and ventured into the house. _

_There was a sour smell in the living room and adjacent kitchen. Dirty plates covered in molding food, candy wrappers, scattered soda cans, fast food bags, old pizza boxes and crusting cups littered the carpet around the couch. Dishes were piled in the sink. The trash was over flowing. The room was dark, except for the flickering TV screen, and flies buzzed in the air. The place looked like it hadn't been cleaned for days, and given Zim's germaphobic compulsion to freak out over even the tiniest speck of dust, Dib guessed fairly quickly that he hadn't visited the upper level for quite some time. _

_Dib played a sort of hop-scotch game across the house towards the trash can, one that involved not stepping on anything nasty, and climbed into the elevator that would take him down into the lower parts of Zim's base. His heart was already hammering out a tattoo against his ribcage. Whatever Zim was planning had to be pretty impressive, if he'd locked himself down here for so long. His palms were sweating, and he rubbed them against the back of his pants, his muscles tensing for anything. When the elevator door opened, Dib was on high alert, and he scanned the shadowed corridor for any sign of his long-time nemesis. He'd only been down into the lower bowels of the base a few times, and already his mind was whirling, pointing out every cool detail and filing it away for later. He wouldn't be surprised if this was a trap, and as he moved slowly through the winding, labyrinthian hallways, he couldn't help but expect the Irken to be lurking around every corner. Every sound, every flicker of movement out of his periphery put him on edge. His nerves were thrumming, and with every new room his heart picked up just a little more. Any minute now..._

_Any minute..._

_Only the minutes were trudging by, until five had turned into ten, and ten had turned into fifteen, and still there was no sign of Zim anywhere. And was it just him, but was the base darker than usual? It was hard to really see anything, the further he went, and the only lights to be had were the blinking red and green LED bulbs of various techno-things. _

"_Zim!" Dib called, poking his head into yet another empty room. "I know you wanted to build up some suspense, or something, but this is just getting annoying now. Will you come out already?"_

_His voice echoed down the dark hall and wandered forlornly away, where it crawled into some dark corner and went silent. "Zim! Come on, stop playing around!" Dib shouted again, but the quiet was slowly starting to suffocate (had the air always been this stale?), and it was becoming abundantly clear that no matter how many doors he opened the rooms behind them were all completely empty. But that didn't make sense. Where could Zim possibly be, if he wasn't here?_

"_Computer," he called. A light flickered overhead, but other than that, the house's computer system didn't respond. "Computer!" he shouted again, in a sharper barking tone. The light flickered again and sparked to life. There was a yawn from a near-by speaker._

"_...Nnnn, wassat...? Rgh," muttered a drowsy voice. There was a sound like a throat being cleared, despite the fact that there was no throat anywhere to be had, and few more unintelligible murmurs, before it finally addressed him in an irritated tone, "I was in sleep mode, I'll have you know."_

"_Yeah, I figured," Dib said. "Sorry 'bout that."_

"_Well, what is it?" snapped the voice, clearly put out at being woken up. _

"_Do you know where Zim is?" Dib asked. "I can't find him anywhere."_

"_Well, of course you can't," the computer snorted. "His bio-signature isn't anywhere in the base."_

"_Well, do you know when he'll be back?"_

"_No," the computer replied, and if it had had shoulders, Dib suspected it would have shrugged them. But something wasn't right. Maybe it was the mess up in the house, maybe it was the choking darkness down here, maybe it was the quiet...but Dib's brows were knitted, and his brain was unsettled, and his insides were jostling in alarm._

"_Do you know when he left?" he asked slowly. _

"_Oh, I dunno," the computer replied in that bored type of way that said it was thinking about it, but didn't really care about the answer. "About four days ago, I guess."_

_Dib felt like he'd been punched in the gut._

"_You mean he's missing?" he demanded, starting to panic, his lungs about as useful as wet paper bags. This wasn't good. Maybe two weeks had been too long, and Zim had already put into motion his latest scheme..._

"_Yeah, maybe," the computer replied dismissively. "Are you done asking questions? I'd like to go back to sleep, if you don't mind." It took Dib's stunned silence as a yes, and the light shut off again, plunging Dib into near total darkness once more. He hardly noticed. His mind was reeling, tripping from one possibility to another, while it kicked his heart into over-drive and made breathing suddenly very difficult. It wasn't like Zim to leave his base so unprotected for so long, which meant something had either gone very right for the Irken, or very wrong. Had he tried to follow Dib to camp? No, Dib would have noticed him right away if Zim had. Was he still on the planet? He wouldn't have just left, not without Gir, but maybe..._

_Abruptly, the dread that was starting to burn a hole in his gut began to boil in anger. If that little toad had gone off to fetch his leaders while Dib was being forced to make origami flowers, he'd murder him. Dib's fists clenched at his sides, and he gritted his teeth furiously. That rotten, cheating coward! He hadn't even the decency to beat Dib himself, but snuck off the first chance he got to fetch his precious rulers. And like an idiot, Dib had let him. He knew he should have just hidden somewhere until the whole stupid camp idea blew over. Or at least argued some more with his father, as little good that would have done. The professor was adamant once he'd made up his mind about something, and wouldn't listen to anyone else's opinion on the subject afterwards. Not that he didn't listen to Dib anyway, but it wouldn't have hurt to try. _

_Dib was already running back the way he'd come, calling himself every name he could think of for being such an incomprehensible moron, his cheeks hot with embarrassed temper. He just hoped he wasn't too late. After a few frustrating wrong turns, he was finally able to locate the exit, and hurried out of the base as fast as he could go, not caring what he stepped on. He ignored Gir waving at him from the couch, asking when Zim would be home again. His house was only a few blocks away from the Invader's, but it still wasn't close enough, and he barely heard Gaz call out to him when he finally did burst through the door and thunder up the stairs to his room two at a time. He threw himself down into his chair and punched the power button on his computer, and then had to wait impatiently while it started up. _

_If anyone knew anything about any recent alien activity, he was hoping it would be the Swollen Eyeballs. If an invasion was imminent, surely they would have noticed something, or could at least give him a hint as to what might have gone on in the two weeks he was at camp. He turned on the small TV as well, switching over to the news to see if anything unduly strange or alarming might have occurred in his absence. It would have been just his luck to find that while he'd been away making noodle art, the city had been invaded without him. _

_But to his relief, the reporters didn't seem to be any more freaked out than they usually were, and their talk of hurricanes and violence and famine and plague wasn't anymore disastrous than it usually was. Other than a group of over-zealous picketers, his own home town was fairly quiet. But that wasn't to say that nothing was happening. He doubted anyone would have really noticed anything out of the ordinary anyway, and since that was what Dib was looking for he was not overly disappointed, or surprised as he really hadn't expected to hear anything. He was hoping Agent Dark Booty would prove to be a little more enlightening. _

"_Ah, Agent Mothman," Dark Booty said once Dib had managed to hail him. The glinting light of his shadowed eyes smiled, and his voice sounded unusually pleased. Given how much Dib had exasperated this particular man over the years with his seeming tendency to cry wolf, the friendly way in which he was greeted was a pleasant surprise. _

"_Agent Dark Booty," he replied, blinking in bemusement. "I was just, ah, checking in. I was away for a while..."_

"_Yes, yes, I'm aware of your absence," Dark Booty chuckled humorously. "No need to worry, but we did send you several messages."_

_Dib had noticed he'd received quite a few new emails while he'd been at camp, but had summarily dismissed them with the assumption that that was to be expected. He didn't think any of them had been important enough to check right away, and was starting to regret that he hadn't. Something was tugging at him, a strange feeling so far down in the base of his brain that he wasn't able to identify what it was. He tried to ignore it, and the way it was twisting his nerves into knots. _

"_I haven't had the chance to read my email yet," he said, smiling apologetically. "What was it you wanted to tell me?"_

"_Just that we've managed to capture an alien, my dear boy!" Dark Booty laughed, and it was obvious that he was just pleased as punch to deliver the news. He couldn't see Dib's silhouetted face, other wise he would have noticed the blood draining from the boy's cheeks. "One of our newest members brought the specimen in, after several grueling days of chasing the creature down, I'm told," he went on with restrained excitement. "We've invited all our associates to come and see the extraterrestrial before we put it on display for the rest of the public."_

"_Oh, really?" Dib replied faintly, too shocked to say much of anything else. It could be some other alien, he told himself. It could just be some guy in a costume, for all he knew. It couldn't be Zim. Zim was too cunning by far to allow himself to be captured. Dib knew that better than anyone. But maybe...maybe...He swallowed thickly, and said as evenly as he could, "Do you still have the...the specimen? I'd like to see it, if I can."_

"_Certainly!" Dark Booty said, eager to show off the find to anyone and everyone he could, even if it wasn't necessarily his to show off. "I can email you the address. It's an amazing creature, Mothman. We've already done countless experiments, and it's still alive! Can you believe that? We're performing a vivisection tonight, if you'd care to come and watch."_

_Dib's stomach turned over. A vivisection...? He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He'd spoken often of doing the same thing to Zim, even dreamed about it...but this couldn't be Zim. This was just some unlucky alien who'd stumbled across the wrong planet and met the wrong person. Could he let them experiment on an innocent person? An alien, yes, but it didn't matter that they weren't human. They didn't deserve that. Maybe Zim did, but he certainly wasn't innocent._

_And yet...even as he felt sorry for the thing the Eyeballs had captured, he couldn't help the ribbon of hope that twined about his heart. If they had the proof that aliens really did exist, maybe they'd be more likely to believe Dib about Zim. If that was the case, and his heart was ballooning with hope at the thought, he couldn't afford to pity the alien, whatever it was, not when it might prove to aid him in his own mission against the Irken. There was no telling how much the Eyeballs might help if he could just get them on his side. It didn't matter if the alien they'd captured was completely innocent or that it might not even be a threat to the rest of humanity, because Zim could be if given half the chance—and since he'd been away from his base for so long, that was looking to be a very likely situation. _

"_I'll be over as soon as I can, Agent Dark Booty," Dib said, with ill-contained eagerness, and tried to ignore the twist of guilt at his own hypocrisy. "I can't wait to see what was captured."_

"_Given your past enthusiasm, Agent Mothman, I don't doubt that you'll be very pleased with Agent Metal-Mouth's findings," Dark Booty replied with relish, and ended the transmission. Dib sat back in his chair, breathing deeply, a smile playing with the corner of his mouth. Finally, here was the proof he needed to convince them Zim was real. They'd captured an alien, and soon the Irken would be next. Victory was so close he could almost taste it, and it was all thanks to this Agent Metal-Mouth. The smile stretched into a full-blown grin, one that threatened to split his face wide open. There was someone else like him, someone as fervent about the paranormal as he was. A soft laugh bubbled up in delight at the thought, and he jumped up from his chair in the growing eagerness to meet them. His mind was rushing forward with thoughts of all the conversations they could have, all the ways they could help each other. After all, this Metal-Mouth had to be a pro, to actually succeed in capturing a specimen. Already, Dib was imagining that they might become friends, maybe even partners. How amazing would it be, to actually have someone on his side? They could help each other so much, and together, they might even be able to bring Zim down once and for all._

_It was a wonderful thought anyway, and it had Dib grinning as he hurried out the door. _

.xXx.

_Dib stood before the dilapidated old building that served as the Swollen Eyeball's headquarters, and wondered why it hadn't been torn down already. It squatted just outside of town, a one-story red brick affair with an imposing black spiked fence that circled the grounds. The gate was nearly rusted shut, and it screeched in protest when Dib pushed it open. The stone walk-way was cracked and overgrown with crab-grass. The shingled roof looked rather bare in some places, and the windows were boarded shut. The walls were weathered and crawling with ivy, and what little of it that wasn't made of stone needed a fresh coat of paint. There weren't any lights on inside that he could see, and all in all, the entire scene was exceptionally foreboding. _

_Dib knocked lightly on the worn front door, and then had to ring the bell a few times before it was answered by a crusting old man up in the high end of his middle years. He peered at Dib through a pair of thick glasses, scratching the top of his head, bald of the scraggly white hair at his temples. _

"_What d'ye want?" the man growled at him suspiciously, shining a flashlight in his eyes. Dib held up the insignia he'd been given upon joining the Swollen Eyeballs—a card stamped with a large, staring eye._

"_Um, I'm Agent Mothman..." Dib replied hesitantly, starting to suspect he might have the wrong house. "I heard there was a...some kind of thing..."_

"_Ah, yer here ta see that monster them Eyeballs caught a while back, eh?" the man said, leering with all three of his moldy teeth. He let out a hacking phlegm-filled laugh. There was a nasty glint in his eye as he beckoned Dib inside and shut the creaking door behind him. "Foller me." _

_The man motioned, and Dib trailed after him as he shuffled down the dimly lit hall. The wallpaper was peeling in places, and dusty old pictures hung haphazardly on protruding nails. The floor was littered with leaves and twigs and little crunching things that Dib didn't dare examine more closely. Some of them were long dead cockroaches and beetles, but others were undoubtedly the bones of small, furry animals. They passed what looked like a sitting room, the furniture draped with cobwebs, and covered over with sheets or plastic. The floor boards groaned beneath his feet, threatening to give away with every step. Something skittered in the dark. The whole place made Dib's skin crawl, and his head turned at every sound, startling at shadows. _

_They descended down a flight of stairs in silence, the old man wheezing heavily, until finally they came to a door that did not look like it belonged to the rest of the house. It was made of thick, impassable steel, with a wrought-iron heavy-duty padlock on the handle to shut out intruders. Or maybe it was there to shut in the alien. The old man dug a large silver key out of his pocket with a trembling bony hand and opened the padlock, before he rapped the door with his cane three times. A small window slid open, and a pair of beady eyes looked out at them in distrust._

"_Agent Mothman here ta see tha beastie," the old man announced in his croaking voice. The eyes narrowed at Dib, and then the window snapped shut again. There was the sound of more locks clicking open before the door silently swung open. The old man grinned again, his severe wrinkles somehow twisting the expression into something hideous, and gestured for Dib to step inside. _

_Dib nodded and moved around the man without touching him, trying to hold his breath against the stink of mothballs and unwashed body odor, and felt rather than heard the door shut behind him. He was standing in a well-lit room, and for a moment he had some trouble believing he was still in the same house. It looked like a hospital room, with a large window on the opposite wall, and the sterile smell of 409. The walls were white and bare, there were several computer monitors blinking in the corner, and the bright florescent lights gave the room an almost cheery feel as opposed to the rest of the house. Somehow, that just unnerved him even more, and he shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the fact that they were sweating._

_There were several men milling about, many of which were standing by the window and gazing down at something on the other side with vivid, clinical interest. They glanced at Dib only briefly before turning back to whatever it was they were watching. However, one of them turned to approach him and Dib recognized Agent Dark Booty. _

"_Well, looks like you finally made it," Dark Booty smiled, and clapped Dib on the shoulder. "Come and see what all the fuss is about, then." _

"_What is this place?" Dib asked, looking around curiously._

"_The house once belonged to my mother," Dark Booty replied. "She passed it on to me when she died, but I already had a residence in the city. But it does have other uses, doesn't it? The paranormal doesn't exactly turn a profit, don't you know." He chuckled. "But with this find, I have a feeling we'll have enough money to afford _proper_ facilities soon." He steered the boy towards the window, and for moment, Dib's feet didn't want to obey. What would he do if it really was Zim being held prisoner in there? He almost wanted to laugh at the thought, and for a second he was torn between seeing what was on the other side of the glass, and the idyllic (if unrealistic) dream that it might be Zim. His first inclination would be to gloat, he mused, maybe point and laugh and rub it in. Finally, after all these years, Zim would be getting no more than he deserved. Maybe he would finally get to see what the Irken's guts looked like at last, and the passing fantasy tugged his mouth into a smug smile. But of course, it was impossible. People just didn't see what was right in front of them, and he knew it. Hell, Zim knew it, and never tired of reminding him. Still, it didn't hurt to dream, and he couldn't help that his heart raced in hopeful anticipation as he stepped up to the window—_

_Oh, God. _

_Dib's heart lurched to a stuttering halt. Something cold grabbed the base of his spine and slowly began to climb upwards, vertebrae by vertebrae. He was looking down into a pit, white and circular and sterile. A steel operating table stood in the middle, surrounded by several standing trays filled with various cutting instruments. Blood dripped steadily to the floor and spread across the tiles. Two men in once pristine white lab-coats, now dyed a dark green, stood with their hands wrist-deep in Zim's chest._

_Dib suddenly couldn't feel his legs. He'd dreamed about this, but somehow his dreams always involved a lot of angry scolding and insults from his long-time nemesis. Not the raw, gut-wrenching agony he saw now. They hadn't even bothered to anesthetize him. Zim's eyes were shut tightly closed, his zipper-teeth clenched so hard they were practically welded shut. He was choking on the blood frothing up through his throat and the small, strangled noises that were the only indication of the screams he was swallowing. He was strapped down, and somehow his Pak must have been disabled, because he could do nothing more than arch his spine in pain, his every muscle tensing so hard they nearly ripped themselves from the bone. His hands were fisted, straining against their bonds, and bloody from the claws that had sunk into his palms. And God, there was so much blood..._

_They'd gutted him from sternum to belly, exposing all the wet, glistening things inside. His split ribs splayed up like two clawed hands, or the teeth of some carnivorous plant. He was naked, stripped bare of the Irken uniform Dib had never seen him without, his green skin pale under the glaring lights. Suddenly, Zim's eyes cracked open, and Dib was unsettled at the fog in them. And then they fixed on him, hurting and desperate, and Dib understood what Zim was asking for—_begging for—_in an instant. _

_**Help me.**_

_Dib wasn't aware his hands had tightened stiffly at his sides. This was not how he had imagined it. The reality of it rose up like bile, and he wanted to vomit, wanted it to _go away_. Things weren't supposed to happen like this, he wasn't supposed to feel like this, all torn up and sick inside. He _should _have been happy. It shouldn't have mattered that he wasn't the one to finally bring down the Irken, and once the Eyeballs finished with their experimentations they'd most likely hand Zim over to the government, he'd never pose a threat to the world ever again. And yet...It did matter. It surprised him how much it mattered that he hadn't been the one to bring Zim down. Instead, someone _else_ had gotten to the Irken first, and that thought sent him tumbling into a dark, vicious, angry state of mind. Abruptly, resentful, bitter hatred bubbled up and boiled over, hot and fast, and he wanted nothing more than to hurt Agent Metal-Mouth, to mutilate him just as much as they were mutilating Zim. They didn't have the right, none of them. He'd been warning the Eyeballs about Zim for years, and after all the time he'd spent chasing the Irken, he would be damned if he let some stranger come in and steal his victory. _

"_Well, what do you think, Agent Mothman?" Dark Booty grinned, his eyes lighting with an unnerving kind of glow as he looked down at Zim. "Quite an impressive catch, eh?"_

_He didn't see Dib swing at him, and his head snapped back with the force of the blow. There was loud crack of breaking cartilage, and Dark Booty went sprawling to the floor, screaming as blood poured down his chin and soaked the front of his shirt. Dib stood over him, shaking with fury, his eyes on fire and his fists held at the ready. The other men in the room froze, staring at Dib in shock. _

"_Let me in there now!" Dib barked at the man standing near the door that lead down into the operating room. The man gaped at him in disbelief, until Dib grabbed a hold of his lapels and slammed him against the wall. "Open it!" he spat, and looked so deadly that the man nodded wordlessly and fished into his pocket for the card-key. He swiped it with trembling hands, and cried out when Dib nearly broke his fingers snatching the key from him on his way past. Dib took the stairs two at a time and had to swipe the key twice to get the second door open, he was so furious. There was a lot of shouting from upstairs, but he hardly heard it, or cared. He slammed into the operating room, and the two scientists digging their gloved fingers into Zim's guts both turned on him in protest._

"_Get out, this room is supposed to be sterile—!" the one nearest to him shouted, and then went gurgling to the floor when the heel of Dib's boot smashed into his cheek with enough force to cave it in. The other one backed away as Dib moved around the table, holding his arms up in defense against the crazed boy. Dib seized his hand and jerked the man forward, kneeing him in the stomach so brutally the scientist threw up before he slumped unconscious to the floor. Dib kicked him for good measure, hard enough to crack a rib, and turned with burning eyes towards the men watching him through the window. _

"_I'm taking the alien with me," he snarled, his voice quiet and seething. "Anyone gets in my way, and I swear to God I'll kill them." He must have looked insane, and quite serious, because no one made a move to stop him. Dib turned away from them in disgust and looked down at Zim...and into him. The Irken's lungs were heaving, the skin of his chest stretch open and stapled to the table. Even despite that his heart was still beating, and Dib's eyes traced the single, winding, intestine-like organ that must have been what Zim called his 'squeedly-spooch' in stunned horror. Zim's head was turned towards him, and Dib could see that both antennae had been broken. The Invader's usually bright red eyes were filled with a murky haze, and he wondered if Zim was able to see him at all. _

"_Zim...?" he asked, in a small voice. One antennae perked, and Zim's mouth twisted to show the barest edge of teeth in his old cocky grin, if only the pain hadn't mangled it. _

"_H-hello...s-stink-beast..." he rasped. He was shaking, panting, and trying not to show how much he was hurting. Dib choked, his eyes stinging with tears, and he scrubbed at them angrily. He was just upset that someone else had done this instead of him. It couldn't be because the sight of Zim laid open like that had jolted him to his core. It was unbelievable that he could possibly be upset by the sight of his sworn enemy in such a state._

_He moved forward wordlessly, not trusting himself to speak, and pried the staples out of Zim's flesh. Carefully, he folded it back over Zim's chest, his stomach heaving against the slick feel of it, the too-sweet smell of Irken blood. He pushed the rib cage back into place as best he could with a squelching crunch, and used the staple-gun to seal the gaping wound shut. Zim had shut his eyes again, hissing through his teeth, his breath catching. Dib's gut churned as he tugged loose the restraints at Zim's wrists and ankles. Then he slid one arm beneath Zim's slender shoulders, the other curling under the Irken's knees, before he leaned down near one of Zim's broken antennae._

"_...Don't die," he whispered, and lifted Zim as gently as he could, trying not to hear the strangled gasp the alien tried to bite down. Already, his shirt was soaked through with blood. He turned back towards the door...and stopped in his tracks. A girl stood in the doorway, gaping at him with wide eyes, her mouth open in surprise. She wasn't very pretty, as girls went. She was tall and gangling, her breasts nonexistent, her hips too narrow. Her hair was dull, long, scraggly. Her front teeth were too-large, giving her an over-bite. Dib recognized her instantly, even without the braces._

"_...Gretchen?" he asked, the shock of seeing her there temporarily gluing his feet to the floor. The whole scene was so awful, that the sight of one of his child-hood classmates had completely derailed him. Where the devil had she come from? Was she even real? Briefly, he wondered if perhaps she wasn't, but rather some sort of hallucination his brain might have conjured up in reaction to the shock to his system. Maybe this was its screwed up way of dealing. Maybe he'd finally snapped and gone as crazy as everyone said he was._

"_Dib, what are you doing?" Gretchen demanded, gesturing to the Irken cradled carefully in his arms. Dib glanced down, aware of the blood dripping steadily to the floor, streaming down his shirt and pants to pool in his shoes..._

"_Rescue," he replied shortly, and moved past her. "I'm not the one who—" he started, and stopped himself. He'd longed for years to do the exact same thing, and if given half the opportunity, wouldn't he have taken it? He glanced down at Zim, noting the Irken's ashen face, the blood seeping through the gash in his chest, and Dib's insides shriveled. Suddenly, he realized how stupidly naïve he'd been. Maybe he'd wanted to hurt Zim in the past, but _this...this_was too awful. "Look, I don't know what you're doing here, but we need to get out, now."_

"_But I thought this was what you wanted!" Gretchen protested breathlessly, following after him as Dib climbed the stairs._

"_So did I," Dib murmured. Zim's eyes were open, but he gave no indication that he'd heard. Then suddenly a hand grabbed Dib's shoulder and jerked him around. He looked down, startled, into Gretchen's desperate brown eyes._

"_No!" she cried, tears brimming over to run down her ruddy cheeks. "You hate him! You've always hated him!"_

"_Why do you—" Dib started, only to cut off when a realization hit his heart. "It was you..." he said slowly, the blood in his veins turning to sludge and ice. "You're Agent Metal-Mouth, aren't you?"_

"_I—I never thought—" Gretchen choked, sobbing now at the coldness creeping into Dib's eyes. "I'm sorry...!" she gasped. "God, I'm so sorry, Dib! I just wanted you to..."_

"_I don't have time for this," Dib snapped abruptly, and turned away from her. Never in his life had he wanted to hit a girl so badly before. She followed after him, crying in earnest now._

_Once Dib had reached the observation room again, one of the men moved in front of him, and actually reached out to grab one of Zim's antennae. The hiss that elicited sparked the fury crouched in Dib's chest, and it erupted violently. In that moment, Dib was the deadliest human on the planet. He slammed his shoulder into the man's chest, hard enough to knock him into another, before he sprang up and kicked a third in the face. The last scientist went down with a resounding thud, and Dib landed in a crouch squarely on the man's chest, still clutching Zim securely in his arms. _

"_Next person that tries to stop me gets their fucking eyes torn out!" he snarled, his voice harsh and savage, and everyone in the room believed him. There were at least fifteen men in the room, but they were scientists not fighters, and they quickly backed away. There was something in the boy's eyes, something feral and frightening, and it was plain that they would have been fools to mess with him. He was out of his mind. _

"_Now see here," Agent Dark Booty said, bold despite how much his voice was shaking. He clutched a hand to his still-bleeding nose. "You can't just..." But the look Dib fixed him with froze Dark Booty in his tracks, and whatever he'd been about to say rolled over and died. _

"_Consider this my resignation," Dib spat, so hateful and contemptuous it left the older man speechless, before the boy turned on his heel and marched out of the room, Gretchen trailing silently after him. No one followed. Neither human said a word as they hurried down the darkened corridors of the old house, Dib listening for the old man, his nerves twisting at every turn. Only they must have gone the wrong way, because suddenly they stumbled into a room he hadn't seen before...and wished he wasn't seeing now._

"_Oh my God, what _is_ this?" Gretchen whispered. Countless jars littered the shelves, filled to the brim with a clotting yellow liquid. Inside them were...things. Body parts. Different types of eyes, shriveled monkey hands (or were they human? Alien?), shrunken heads, tongues, hearts. One held a coiling white tape-worm. Another, a wrinkled fetus. Horns and antlers, stuffed heads, and strings of teeth hung from the ceiling or were mounted on the filthy walls. The stench of death and fear and embalming fluid hung thick in the air. On the other side of the room, an old carcass was nailed to the wall, staring at Dib with black inhuman eyes. Its skin was gray and mottled, its hands and feet mangled beyond recognition. Its insides had been scooped out, leaving a gaping hole from ribcage to pelvis, the flesh dangling in leathery strips. Dib's arms tightened convulsively around Zim, picturing all his organs put in jars to be labeled and shelved, his body crucified..._

_He turned around and got the hell out of there._

_And then they were finally outside, and Dib was sucking in deep lung-fulls of fresh air, relieved to be free of the house at last. He set Zim down in the grass as gently as he could, unable to hold out any longer, and threw up in the bushes. Gretchen waited off to the side for him to stop retching, and stayed quiet as his stomach eventually settled and he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, color riding his cheeks._

"_...I can't believe you did this," he said at length, dully, his back still turned to her. She looked away from him and shuffled her feet uncomfortably, unable to meet his eyes. "Why?" he asked, his voice hardening._

_She closed her eyes. "I just wanted you to love me," she admitted in a soft voice. "I wanted you to see me. But you were always chasing after Zim, and...and I..."_

"_...You knew he was an alien," Dib said flatly._

"_...Yes," she replied. "I didn't think so at first, but then I saw him without that disguise a year ago. I swear, Dib, I thought this is what you wanted. You've always said..."_

"_How did you catch him?" Dib growled, low and quiet. Gretchen flinched. _

"_I snuck into his campus and crushed up some sleeping pills in his food," she said miserably, staring at the ground. Dib sat back on his haunches, head down, watching Zim's chest rise and fall. What a stupid way to get caught, he thought at the Irken. _

"_Do they know where he lives?" he asked flatly, sharp eyes cutting towards her. _

"_No," she replied, shaking her head. "I just called Agent Dark Booty and we brought him straight here."_

"_Good," Dib said, standing up and pining her down with a cold, level glare. "You won't tell them where Zim's base is, or where he goes to class. I never want to see you come near him again. And for that matter, don't come near me, either. If you do, I promise the next time I _will_ hurt you."_

_A fresh batch of tears was streaming down Gretchen's face, which crumpled in devastation as she nodded, sniffing. "I just wanted to...to make you happy..." she murmured in a small, breathy voice. Dib turned away from her, gathered Zim up and left without a word. He didn't turn when he heard her collapse to her knees, and he kept walking as she started to cry again. _

_He wasn't aware of it yet, but something was started that day. Something had crawled into his heart and burrowed deep. And it was going to change everything, this thing born of blood.  
_

_**To be continued...**_

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim or anything else I might reference. **

**I have returned! And with a brand, spanking new update with some more angst and horror. I'm already working on the next update, and I can happily say that the ZADR will begin in the next few chapters! So review, or you won't get any!  
**

**Anyway, Camp Tex-Lake is a real place, but it's only for girl scouts who sell enough cookies during super-bowl season. Obviously, Dib is not a girl scout, and despite how horrible I make the place sound, I spent many enjoyable years there. But, then again, I like camping more than Dib does. If I'd experienced what he did I probably would have hated it, too. Anyway, it's actually a very wonderful place, although they did not have jet-skis. **

**Until next time,**

**Raha  
**


	17. Welcome to Vort Enjoy Your Stay

**Invader Zim**

**The Rats of NIMH**

**Chapter Seventeen: Welcome to Vort (Enjoy Your Stay)**

* * *

**WARNING: Torture and anal probing ahead. Tread with caution.**

"_You'll never take me alive, Zim!" Dib cried, and struck a heroic pose, and waved his arms around dramatically. _

"_We'll just see about _that_, won't we?" Zim retorted, his grin maniacal and his glinting eyes deadly as he moved in for the kill. His fingers moved deftly over the controls, and the giant robot gorilla under his command maneuvered swiftly across the battlefield, taking out cars and buildings in its wake. _

_Dib's equally enormous mutant platypus monster screeched wetly and took a swan dive off the top of a sky-scraper to land with an earthquake force right where Zim's robot's head used to be. Zim had spun out of the way at the last second, snarling Irken obscenities in a language Dib only half understood, before picking up an eighteen-wheeler in each gargantuan hand and hurling them in Dib's direction. He ducked behind a building, and the two oil trucks went crashing into the pavement, and then promptly exploded. _

"_C'mon Gaz! Use your army of rat creatures to take him out! If we work together, we could win this battle!" Dib shouted through his mouth-piece, frantically dodging and weaving as Zim chucked one vehicle after another at him, firing wildly with his newly procured Tachyon Laser Blaster 4000. "Dammit platypus, _**do**_ something! Yeah, that's it! Eat his face! Take THAT, alien scum!"_

"_Remove your disgusting duck...beaver...duck...MEAT from Zim's robot this instant! Zim commands you! Augh, you ridiculous gorilla, hit it _**harder**_!"_

_Gaz groaned to herself from where she was curled up on the couch, engrossed in her GameSlave Color and the new Pokemon game she'd acquired over the Christmas holidays. She scowled, and adjusted the bluetooth phone attached to her ear. _

"_Dib, I am two badges away from defeating all the gym leaders, and that _stupid_ Team Rocket just took out my Haunter. Now I have to use...ugh..._**Chikorita**._ So if you don't leave me alone right now I'm gonna make you wish I was an only child."_

"_You have _Chikorita_?" Dib snorted with disdainful incredulity. "Why did you go and pick _that_ one? Everyone knows Cyndaquil is way better. Hell, _any_ Pokemon is better than—"_

"_Look, I _**know**_ that, okay?" Gaz snarled. "But it's not like I have much of a choice! All my other stupid pokemon fainted! And I _didn't_ pick it, I traded for it. There's a _difference_."_

"_DIB! Will you stop arguing about some ridiculous banana monster and PAY ATTENTION!" Zim screeched, stomping over to where Dib was crouched in some old lady's rose garden. Dib howled, and threw himself over the white picket fence just as the gorilla's elephantine foot kicked in the roof and scattered debris all over the yard. He sprinted through another garden that looked identical to the first, firing laser beams over his shoulder and generally trying not to get squashed. _

"_Wait," he said, suddenly coming to a screeching halt and whirling around to point an accusing finger up at Zim. Zim's gorilla staggered as he pulled up on the controls, too surprised to do anything else. "How did _**you **_know Chikorita looks like a banana?" Dib demanded. "Unless...Zim! You play pokemon, don't you!"_

"_What?" Zim squeaked shrilly. "LIES!"_

"_You do!" Dib crowed, and dissolved into a fit of laughter. "I _**knew**_ it! Not only are you a contemptible alien freak, but you're also a _**total nerd **_to boot! Bahahahaha!"_

"_I am not!" Zim cried angrily, his face flushing a dark green and he tried to stomp Dib flat beneath the heel of his robot, but the detestable little worm was too quick. Instead, all he managed to do was make his gorilla dance a rather bizarre version of the _Cucaracha. _It made Gir laugh, but other than that, it wasn't very effective._

"_You _are_! Oh, that is just priceless!" Dib managed to wheeze into his chortling giggle-fit, while he took pot-shots up at the gorilla's shins and knee-caps. "So tell me, Zim, have YOU managed to catch 'em all?"_

"_Shut up!" Zim bellowed, switching his robot to auto-pilot and throwing open the cockpit door so he could berate the stinking human in person. "Who are you to tease the Almighty ZIIIM! I know for a fact you play that game all the time!"_

"_Yeah, but that's different," Dib scoffed, waving his hand in dismissal. "I'm not the one who hates everything about the whole human race."_

_Zim froze for a second, and glanced over at a few people standing out in their front lawns, most of them still in their pajamas and clutching mugs of coffee, all gaping in slack-jawed amazement at the two Godzilla-sized monsters currently duking it out in their neighborhood. It was the Monday morning fight before skool, which usually consisted of anything that was left over from their Epic Weekend Battle, and guaranteed that the week would always start off rather strangely. Really, this was pretty typical, and these people ought to be used to it by now. Still, Zim felt the need to defend himself and his shoddy attempt at a cover. _

"_Are your pants made of fire, Dib-worm?" he demanded. "Who said anything about hating the humans?"_

"_YOU did," Dib retorted flatly. "You've said it every day since you came to this planet. In your SPACESHIP. From SPACE."_

_This, of course, was said for the onlooker's benefit. If they cared to listen. Which they usually didn't._

"_What?" Zim cried, throwing his hands in the air. "Zim was smeeted on this _**horrible**_ planet just like the rest of you sniveling earth-monkeys! We loooove humans. Right, Gir?"_

"_I like potatoes," Gir said helpfully._

"_People _**aren't**_ smeeted, Zim," Dib replied with as much scorn as was humanly possible, with an added roll of not just his eyes, but his whole head. "It's called being born. Why don't you Google it before you open your big, stupid mouth?"_

"_At least my mouth isn't as big as your Snorlax sized monster of a head which is abnormally large!" Zim shot back petulantly. _

"_How can you people _not_ see that he's an alien!" Dib shouted, gesticulating furiously at Zim and glaring around at the humans gathered on the street. "And quit making fun of my head, dammit!"_

"_Oh please," Zim snorted. "This is all completely normal. Yup, no alien plots to take over the world here."_

"_Yeah? And what about the giant monsters destroying the city, huh?" Dib asked, his hands on his hips._

"_Them? It's a movie stunt. That's all just a bunch of special effects," Zim shrugged, before his mouth curled into a wicked grin and his garnet eyes lit with malicious glee. "In fact...if you hurry over there, you all get the chance to be extras! And the one with the best death scene gets to be in the movie. But you have to hurry, because they won't be filming for much longer."_

_Dib gawked, furious and flabbergasted, as his neighbors moved off towards the giant-platypus-gorilla-droid-death-match with looks of mildly excited interest. _

"_Ugh! You gotta be kidding me!" he shouted. A part of him hoped they got squashed. They would deserve it for being so utterly retarded. _

"_Did you really expect them to believe you?" Zim scoffed, preening at his own brilliance. _

"_Well, no, not about you," Dib admitted with a sigh. "But I really didn't think they were so stupid as to just walk into a battlefield like that."_

"_You over-estimate their abilities, worm-baby," the alien purred as he made his slinking way towards the boy, and gave him a mockingly consoling pat on the shoulder. Dib brushed him off with a scowl. But Zim just smiled...and then wrapped his arms around Dib's neck, and leaned in to nuzzle at his ear. _

_Dib froze._

"_But then, they've always been a stupid race," Zim murmured. "That's why they all burned."_

"_What?" Dib said, jerking back, his eyes wide and his brows knitted in confusion. Zim cocked his head, his mouth still pulled into this gentle, wane, strange little smile. He looked...almost sad._

"_Wake up, Dib-thing," he said quietly. "Your world has ended."_

_And that's when Dib noticed that the sky had turned a bloody shade of red, and the air was filled with an unspeakable noise, and the earth was cracking apart beneath his feet..._

"_Wake up..." Zim said. _

_And then, like everything else, he was gone._

"WAKE UP, MEAT!"

Dib yelped as something small and hard and sharp drove into his ribs. He shot up and looked around in disoriented alarm, automatically searching for Zim—and blinked when he spotted the Irken standing at the door of his cell, his arms crossed and his red eyes narrowed angrily. And for a wild instant he thought...

But, no. This Irken was too small to be his long-ago rival, and yet, the resemblance was uncanny. Then again, he supposed that they all pretty much looked the same. But for a quiet moment, Dib could almost imagine that the last ten years had never happened. That he was back where things were simpler, and they were still just children, and the world was as idiotic as ever but it was still _there. _That this was just another stint in the Crazy House For Boys. That Zim had finally gotten bored and come to get him, if only to see the look on Dib's face at having to be rescued by his own arch nemesis. They would argue, and call each other names, and Dib would have to rush to stop whatever ridiculous plan Zim had set in motion in his absence.

...It twisted his gut that he missed it all so badly.

"What do you want?" he said coldly, and bit down on his homesickness, focusing instead on the black pool of hatred that sat in his stomach like bitter sludge.

"The warden says you're to be processed," the Irken guard informed his coldly, clapping a pair of electrostatic cuffs around his wrists, before holding up a thin black device that looked a lot like a TV remote.

"Know what this is?' the guard asked with a nasty smirk.

"No," Dib replied, though he had the sinking feeling that it wasn't pleasant.

The guard bared his teeth in a mean smile. "I'll show you," he said, and pushed a button. Dib jumped when he felt the Pak tighten around his spinal cord, and then he hit the ground with a startled yelp of pain. A jolt of energy had just shot down his back, where it shuttered along his nervous system and rendered his legs useless. It hadn't hurt as much as he knew it could have, just left him feeling as if all of his limbs had just fallen asleep.

"That's what it does," the Irken informed him smugly. "Now get up and follow me, or I'll show you worse than that."

Not seeing much of a choice, Dib struggled to get his feet under him, and then tried to stamp away the sharp tingling in his toes. One of the walls of his cell had gone semi-transparent, and as he stepped through he felt it tingle unpleasantly across his skin. Two more guards stood at attention outside his cell, each clutching what looked like a big, pink Nerf gun in their hands. Dib smirked to himself; they must consider him to be pretty dangerous if they thought they needed Tachyons.

Curiously, he glanced around. He'd been too exhausted to get a good look at everything the first time he'd been through here, but as far as he could tell his prison block was at least three stories tall. A slarge space was cut out of the middle, round and oblong, and the cells were stacked on top of one another three at a time. They shimmered and crackled and threw strange shadows up on the walls. Everything was gray here, or dyed a pale blue from the light of the force-fields. It was a boring, harsh, miserable place, and he was almost he had lost his glasses, because even half-blind he could tell that much.

He was lead out of the prison block and through a small steel door, to a room that had no windows or furniture save an uncomfortable metal chair. At least, that's what he'd thought it was. When they forced him to sit, the thing came alive beneath him. It grabbed the cuffs around his wrists with an electromagnetic force, and snapped metal restraints across his hips and ankles, while two more slid down over his shoulders. Another came up under his chin, adjusting along his jaw-line to hold his head in place.

Knives came out of the ceiling.

Dib felt his stomach drop, and he tried to recoil, but he had nowhere to go. He stared convulsively as several long arms, bristling with what looked like an array of surgical equipment, descended towards him face. Dib sucked in a breath as one of the arms reached for him, his entire body shaking, while his heart tried to claw its way out through his throat. They couldn't be doing this _again...__**not again...**_

_Bzzzt!_

Dib stiffened. And then he realized that the "surgical knife" had just shaved a big bald streak right through his thick black hair.

"HEY!" he squawked indignantly, simultaneously embarrassed they were shaving him and relieved that it wasn't something worse. The Irkens snickered nastily, and Dib snapped his mouth shut, glaring. He just hoped that was the extent of the torture for today, and watched dispassionately as more and more inky strands drifted to the floor, flinching now and then whenever the razor nicked his ear. Well...he'd needed a hair-cut, anyway.

The chair moved beneath him, and pulled him upright. A cable was plugged into the Pak on his back, and a black computer screen emerged from the wall. One of the Irken, wearing a white lab coat and a pair of goggles, stood watching the screen as it scanned through a list of data, every now and again making notes on the clip-board in his hands.

"Specimen is under weight," he noted with clinical disinterest. "Ocular neurons are inadequate, and will probably need replacing, but for now the Pak may provide a temporary fix. Brain and cranium appear to be abnormally large for its skeletal structure. Is this normal for your species?"

Dib scowled at the Irken. "Yes," he ground out through clenched teeth.

"Sensors indicate you are lying."

"Why can't you just leave my head alone!" Dib spat angrily. The Irken raised a brow at him, then flicked his antennae in a gesture Dib had come to recognize as the Irken equivalent of a shrug. He turned back towards the screen, and began inputting several commands, his hands sweeping across the monitor with practiced ease. Dib didn't realize what was happening until he felt the Pak _moving _behind his eyes, creeping through his brain like crawling ivy and twining through his nerves. He drew in a sharp gasp, jerking hard against his restraints in spasmodic reflex, feeling sick. There was a burning stab of pain, and the world swam in tears, and he squeezed his lids shut for a moment when everything suddenly tilted upside down, before his vision began to blur and sharpen and blur, like someone fiddling with the focus on a camera.

And then, suddenly, Dib could see. _Really_ see, even better than he had with his glasses. He felt the Pak retreat, and he swallowed deep gulping breaths of air, trying very hard not to hyperventilate. He didn't know the Pak could _do_ things like that...and when he tried to imagine what _else _it might be capable of his mind went blank with cold, seeping terror. Heart stuttering, he watched dimly as two mechanical arms came down and cut right through the middle of his favorite shirt.

And then they went for his pants.

"Wait! What are you doing?" Dib demanded shrilly, but the guards ignored him. His skin prickled in the chill air, and heat was rising on his cheeks as he was stripped down to nothing. After that, they poked and prodded at him for almost fifteen minutes. They checked his teeth, and wrote down how many fingers and toes he had. They stuck things in his ears, and flashed a light in his eyes. They listened to his heart, and counted how many times it would beat in a minute. He felt like some hound at the Westminster Dog Show.

The examination was thorough, and the the rest of it was invasive, callous, and deeply humiliating. When it was over, Dib was flushed and shaking. After that he was blasted with cleansing chalk until his skin was rubbed raw, but the unclean feeling didn't go away. Finally, they let him go. Without a word, he accepted the black and gray jumpsuit they offered him, and pulled it on with trembling fingers, his eyes glued to the floor.

The computer in the wall gave a soft beep, and Dib glanced up automatically. For a few fleeting seconds he was able to catch his reflection in the darkened screen. His amber eyes were dull and flat, with deep bruising circles. A faint gray outline indicated where his hair used to be, and he felt strangely naked without the ever-present scythe, or his pony tail. Without it, his head looked even bigger, and his ears stuck out more than ever. His lip curled at the sight, and he grimaced at himself. He was drastically underweight, and he could see where his bones jutted out through his ill-fitting, baggy clothes. He knew if he lifted his short, he would be able to count every one of his ribs.

The black screen retreated back into the wall, and he was led out of the room. They did not take him back to his cell. Instead, he followed the Irken guards out into what looked like an exercise yard. A twenty foot wall of concrete surrounding it on all sides, with a total of three sentinel towers, and guards stationed along the top. Close to fifty prisoners milled about in the yard, doing various prisoner-things like lifting weights and looking mean. Nearly a third of them were Vortian, and Dib recognized a few other random species he'd come across whilst hacking Zim's computer, but the rest were strange and unfamiliar. Creatures with giant screws in their heads, things with four legs and no arms, green blobs that drooled pink goo all over themselves...

And then he noticed the Irken prisoners.

They were all gathered together in a corner away from everyone else, pressed up against the building nearest to the door, and huddled close in a tight-knit pack. Any other alien that tried to get close got snapped at, and quickly driven away. Even from across the yard, he could tell their faces were pinched, their antennae aggressively erect, their eyes narrowed dangerously. They looked like a bunch of meerkats, they were so twitchy and watchful.

Dib could understand why. The average Irken was about the size of a human child, and some of the aliens here practically towered over _him, _much less one of those little shrimps. And while the Screw-Heads and the Vortians weren't much bigger, they outnumbered the Irken ten to one. It was no wonder they were nervous. They had no power here, and some of these creatures did _not_ look happy at having to share their space with the very species that had thrown them in prison in the first place.

"Line up along the wall, come on, get moving!" shouted a guard, grabbing Dib by the arm with his Pak and shoving him into place. Dib watched as about a dozen more aliens were brought into the yard behind him, most of them all different races, but he spotted an Irken or two among them. One of those Irken, a small female with sharp purple eyes, was slammed against the wall next to him, so forcefully he heard the back of her head crack sharply against the cement.

"Watch who you're shoving, filth!" snapped the little Irken, clutching at her head, her long curled antennae laid flat and angry. Dib did a double-take. He would have recognized that voice anywhere, but it _couldn't_ be, he hadn't seen her in _years_...

"_Tak_?" he exclaimed, his mouth dropping open in utter disbelief. The Irken glanced up at him irritably, and then did a double-take of her own, her eyes widening in surprise. She was...so _small_ now. Her head barely reached his stomach, though he remembered clearly they had been the same height when they'd met, all those years ago.

"Dib!" she cried. "What are you—"

"No talking in line!" snarled a guard, and waved a black remote in their direction. Dib gritted his teeth to keep from crying out as the Pak electrified his spine. His knees gave out, and the only reason he didn't fall was because he'd pressed his back up against the wall. The only indication of pain from Tak was the slight tension in her jaw, and a twitch of her antennae. They both fell silent, though they kept shooting one another curious, sidelong glances every few seconds.

The yard fell silent. Then, one of the shortest, fattest Irken Dib had ever seen came waddling through the door, flanked by two guards, a look of pompous superiority stamped all over his blubbery face. He had stumpy little arms and stumpy little legs and his head barely came up to Dib's waist. He looked like fat green toad.

He came to a stop in front of the new prisoners, and smiled at them all with small, beady red eyes.

"Welcome to Prison Vort," said the Irken in a nasally, squeaking voice. "It's so nice to meet you all, we always enjoy seeing new faces. I am Warden Skoodge, and I am in charge of keeping order in this sector."

"You have _got _to be kidding me..." Dib heard Tak mutter under her breath, and got the distinct impression that she was rolling her eyes. Even Dib had to repress a snort at the ridiculous name, and regarded the chubby Irken in amusement as he puffed himself up importantly.

"From this day on, your fate is in my hands," Skoodge went on, his chin wobbling. "I alone decide whether you live, or die horribly. If you have any thoughts about escaping, you can forget them. No ship is allowed near this planet, and those detected in the atmosphere will be immediately shot down. The Teleporters will vaporize anyone stupid enough to try and use them without the proper authorization. You will be here for the rest of your miserable lives, so you better get used to it. Any misbehavior or insubordination on your part will be severely dealt with. However, I don't have to be your enemy. We're all friends here on Vort. So if you tow the line, and follow the rules as you should, we'll get along just fine."

This statement was met with silence, while the new prisoners exchanged skeptical glances with one another and disdainfully raised their brows (if they had any).

"Now then!" Skoodge said, clapping his hands. "We have a very special guest today. Everyone, I'd like you to meet former Ruler of the Empire, Purple!"

Suddenly, the door slammed open so hard it smashed into the wall about an inch from Dib's shoulder. He leapt back with a startled cry, throwing his hands up defensively—and then deflated like a punctured air-balloon when he saw who it was, a disgusted sound burbling in the back of his throat.

"Hey! Let go of me! Your Tallest commands you!" shouted a _very_ indignant Purple as he was hauled into the yard by two burly Irken guards. They were at least half his height, but Purple was hardly equipped to fight them off. At some point, the rings around his torso had been removed, and all the guts that had been pushed up into his ribcage had sunk back to where they belonged, giving him a gangly, emaciated look. He was too long and too skinny, with no muscle-tone whatsoever. His legs, nothing more than skin and bone (and so rarely used since Purple had chosen to hover everywhere he went) collapsed under his weight the second he was released.

"Someone is gonna hear about this!" Purple howled furiously. "You can't treat me like this!"

The two guards looked at one another, and barked out a jeering laugh.

"Yeah? Like who?" one of them sneered.

"Tallest Red," Purple said, sounding both imperious and petulant at the same time. "When he hears about this—"

"Aw, give it a rest, nobody's seen Red since the Control Brains put Overlord Mar in charge," the other guard snorted. "Good thing they did, it's about time we had a _competent _ruler. I always said we should have gotten rid of you purple-eyed freaks a long time ago."

"Ahem," Skoodge said, giving a little cough into his hand, attempting to catch their attention.

"Hey, uh...should we be calling them that?" asked guard Number One, completely ignoring the smaller Irken.

"What? What do you mean?" said guard Number Two, looking confused.

"Well, it's just that they don't _all_ have purple eyes," guard Number One pointed out. "Some of them have blue, or even green eyes. I'm just saying, if they don't all have purple eyes, we can't just lump them into one monochromatic category like that."

"Yeah, you're right," said guard Number Two. "Then...what _should_ we call them?"

"_Ahem_," said Skoodge a bit more forcefully, one of his antennae jumping in irritation. "It's not nice to ignore your commanding officers..."

"_Non_-reds?"

"That sounds weird. What about unred? Y'know, like a play on unread."

"A play on _what_?"

"Unread. You know, like illiteracy."

"...That's stupid."

"_You're_ stupid!"

"AHEM," Skoodge all but shouted, his eye twitching, and his hands planted angrily on his pudgy hips.

"Oh, yeah, that was a brilliant come-back."

"Shut up. I don't hear any bright ideas from you."

"Why do you always have to be so mean to me? Can't we just call them defects, like everyone else?"

"Not all defects have different colored eyes, moron."

"Ugh! Let's just drop it, I don't want to argue anymore."

"No, we can't move on until this has been settled!"

"HEY! I'M TRYING TO TALK HERE!" screamed Skoodge, and the sound of his temper finally snapping reverberated through the prison yard for a full ten seconds. "LISTEN TO ME!"

Number One turned around with a snarl on his lips, right on the verge of jumping down that insolent smaller's throat, before he remembered who was in charge and caught himself just in time, throwing a quick salute and clicking his heels together. Number Two was less intelligent. He reached out and back-handed Skoodge across the face without thinking—and then froze in horror when he realized what he'd just done.

"Oh...Wa-Warden," Number Two stammered, taking a step backwards. "I-I didn't—I wasn't—I meant no dis-disrespect..."

"No disrespect?" Skoodge asked in a deceptively calm, quiet voice, one hand cupping his cheek and his eyes burning crimson. "_No disrespect_?"

"Sir, I—"

"Who is the Warden of this sector?" Skoodge hissed.

"Y-you are."

"Who conquered the slaughtering rat people and was the first Invader to subdue their planet in Impending Doom II?"

"You are..."

"Who was promoted over your head as Commanding Officer?"

"...You are."

"THAT'S RIGHT!" Skoodge shrieked, and actually started jumping up and down in fury, his eyes bugging right out of his skull. "_**I **_conquered the slaughtering rat people! _**I **_took over Blorch! Overlord Mar put _**ME**_in charge! _ME, ME, ME_! Being tall doesn't matter anymore! Getting results, _that's _what matters! So you'll do what I say, or else!"

Number Two clenched his teeth together, his antennae trembling and his hands fisted tightly. He was fighting to keep a straight face, despite the defiant scowl simmering in his eyes, torn between the instinctive urge to smack the smaller down, and his duty as a soldier to obey those in charge.

"Yes..._Commander_," he ground out, failing to keep the bitter resentment out of his tone. Skoodge's eyes narrowed to slits, and he snapped his teeth angrily.

"I think a day in the boiler will teach you some respect," he said, his mouth twisting into a cruel smile. Number Two's eyes widened, and he stared at Skoodge for a moment in pure fear.

"N-no...!" he cried, tripping back several paces. "Y-you can't put me in there! It's only for prisoners! You can't! _You can't_!"

"I can," Skoodge replied with a simmering little smirk, and jerked his head at Number One. "Take him."

Number One hesitated, his fearful gaze darting back and forth between Skoodge and his partner. But there was something mad in the smaller's burning eyes, and it convinced him to do as he was told. He put the now screaming, crying, frantic Number Two in hand-cuffs and dragged him away.

"Send in two more guards on your way out, will you?" Skoodge called after them cheerfully, before turning back to face the prisoners in smug self-satisfaction. "Well, then, where was I? Ah, yes. Before we were so _rudely _interrupted, I was introducing everyone to Purple, here."

"That's _Tallest_ Purple to you, Skoodge," Purple snapped. He'd managed to sit up, but that seemed to be the extent of his capabilities at the moment. His frame was too weak to support him if he tried to stand, though he was making a valiant effort of it.

A slow smile spread like molasses across Skoodge's face, and he pointed a thick black remote in Purple's direction.

"What—?" Purple started to say, but he was abruptly cut off when Skoodge pushed the button. His back arched so hard Dib heard several of the vertebrae pop. He thrashed and flailed and kicked in seizure reflex, flopping like a fish out of water. The noise was unspeakable. It drove six feet into Dib's skull, and was still ringing in his ears when Purple finally stopped screaming—but only because he'd bitten through his own tongue and was choking on blood instead. His head was banging into the ground over and over, and the veins were popping in his eyes, turning them a murky, muddy brown. And still, Skoodge didn't stop.

The Irken's mouth was quirked into a horrifying little grin, and his eyes were alight with an insane glee as he watched Purple writhe in the dirt. Awful, giddy laughter was bubbling out of his throat like acid.

"That's _Warden_ Skoodge to you," he said in an unhinged, sing-song voice. "And it's time for a little payback..."

Dib's feet were rooted to the spot, horror-stuck and lightheaded, feeling as if all his insides had been scooped out. Tak was trembling so hard he could feel it through the wall—and then he startled when she subconsciously pressed against his leg, one clawed hand clutching at his pants, her eyes tightly closed.

His heart clenched.

He knew he shouldn't get involved. He ought to keep his head down, and concentrate on surviving this hell-hole until he could figure a way out of here. But...In that moment, Tak looked just like a scared little kid. And maybe she had tried to destroy the earth...but she had also been his friend. Suddenly, Dib had broken away from the wall and was moving across the yard before he even realized what was happening. Skoodge's back was turned, so he didn't even notice the human until Dib had pulled back his foot and kicked him as hard as he could, punting him across the yard like a big, green football. Skoodge let out a sharp squeal, and landed in a heap, skidding face-down into the mud.

Everything stopped, suspended in a state of absolute stupefaction.

Purple collapsed against the ground, his chest heaving with every breath, his mouth hanging limp, and his eyes unseeing, and his hand opening and closing in spasmodic reflex. Blood oozed out through his teeth, and ran in slow rivulets from his eyes.

"That's enough!" Dib barked into the silence. "You'll kill him!"

Skoodge slowly right himself and turned to stare at Dib in frothing, demented fury. He flushed a dark green, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head, and Dib had the crazed urge to laugh at him, he looked so ridiculous. It was as if, for one fleeting instant, the whole universe held its breath. For one fleeting instant, Dib stood tall and proud and confident.

And then his back ripped open, and the world melted into white-hot agony.

.xXx.

Dib didn't know how long he'd been under, but he must have passed out at some point, because when he slowly awoke he was back in his cell. Everything hurt, and he could smell the clotting stench of blood and dried urine. He groaned into the floor, and tried to get more comfortable, intent on going back to sleep.

"That was a pretty stupid thing to do, Stink-Beast."

Dib's eyes snapped open. He pushed himself up, even though every muscle in his body protested the movement. And slowly, his eyes traveled up the length of the figure standing in his cell. The creature smirked down at him, with his arms crossed and his hips canted and a look of supreme self-satisfaction in his brightly burning eyes.

_Impossible. _

"...Zim?" Dib whispered.

"Hello, Dib-Stink," Zim grinned, showing all of his zipper-teeth.

"You...how...what..." Dib stammered. His brain had gone blank, entirely unable to comprehend what he was seeing, or react to it in the slightest. It fired back and forth randomly, twitching from one idea to the other, but none of them made any sense. He felt as if the floor was tilting out from under him. "How did you get in...?"

"I didn't," Zim replied, rocking slightly on his heels and glancing curiously around at Dib's cell.

"Then...what...?"

The smile Zim gave him was bone-chilling.

"I'm not actually here, human," he said, looking far too pleased with himself. "You've finally gone as mad as everyone said you were."

"I...What? I don't understand," Dib said. "You're right there..."

"I'm not," Zim said, his Cheshire cat grin nearly splitting his face in two. "I'm not here at all. _I'm inside your head. _You're losing it, Dib."

_You're losing it._

_**To be continued...**_

* * *

**Disclaimer: All rights belong to the people who own them.**

**Wow, you guys, I don't even know what to say. It's been over two-hundred years since I wrote on this thing, and I can't decide whether that's good or bad. Well, bad for you I suppose, having to wait that long, but good because I'm STILL writing it. A hopeful sign that I might finish this someday, probably, in the distant future. Maybe. It's only been FOUR YEARS since I started it, after all...**

**ANYWHO. **

**I know Skoodge may be a little out of character. I'll explain more about how he got like that in coming chapters, but I hope I got across most of it. Basically, he's been stomped on most of his life. Now he's in a position of power. So, naturally, he's going to abuse that power. However, the Taller Irken under his command don't listen to him because he's short and ugly, which has kind of driven him around the bend. Again, I will explain more later, so don't bite my head off if he doesn't act like you think he should. I know how protective of these characters you guys can be. Seriously. **

**I'll try to have the next chapter out soon, to make up for all the time I've been off doing other things (My Little Pony, Ninja Turtles, Avatar: The Last Airbender...damn you ninja pony benders!). I want to give a special shout out to Shego1142 and cupidity11 for inspiring me to start writing on NIMH again. And, to RealityPhobia for nominating this on TV Tropes. At least, I think it was RealityPhobia, I can't get ON TV Tropes anymore to make sure...but I was rather flattered that this little fic was actually mentioned on the interwebs somewhere _other_ than fanfiction. THANK YOU, GUYS! And thank you to everyone that has stuck with me so far. I LOVE YOU ALL!**

**Also, those guards just started arguing on their own. I had nothing to do with that. **

**Peace.**

**Raha**

**PS: please inform me of spelling errors, I was in a hurry to get this out and didn't proof-read. I need a beta...**


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